SETTING UP A RHEL9/CentOS VIRTUAL MACHINE AND INSTALLING SOFTWARE IN IT

I have some quite large engineering software to install in RHEL/CentOS since they are supported on both Linux operating systems. I have downloaded RHEL9.4 and CentOS9 and aim to run either as a virtual machine in vmware on my Windows 10 host.
I have the setup files of my software also downloaded in my Windows host and want to move them to the virtual machine, then run the installation
1. What type of installation of RHEL/CentOS should I use? Server with GUI, Workstation? Which additional features should I enable or should I just have the minimum selection?
2. I have had two attempts at this having only installed the minimum workstation option for both. Copy/paste and drag/drop only worked for text. All other files including video files and crucially the rar/zip files for my software don't get pasted and when I drag/drop, the Files window in RHEL/CentOS shuts itself down. Are there more settings needed on vmware to enable this?
3. I tries adding a shared folder for my host and RHEL/CentOS guest but it does not show up in the RHEL/CentOS file system.

How do I go about this? Thank you