I had a little trouble figuring this out - so making a note of it.
The VMWare Fusion default location for VMs is ~/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized,
which doesnt work well for me as I typically have Documents symbolically linked to my Dropbox
directory and prefer to move the default VM location rather than manage exclusions on every
Dropbox install I have.
It's relatively straightforward on VMWare Workstation, and Oracle VirtualBox - but for some reason not well documented in VMWare Fusion. Turns out it's relatively simple to update, so here it is so I don't forget the next time I need to do this. Saving as a public gist in case it's of value for anyone else.
I'm using VMWare Fusion v6, haven't tested on other versions - but I suspect it'll work on them. Need to test this.
Open up ~/Library/Preferences/VMWare Fusion/preferences in your favorite text editor
cd ~/Library/Preferences/VMWare\ Fusion
cp preferences preferences.backup
vi preferences
Look for a line starting with prefvmx.defaultVMPath. If it is present in the file, update
the directory assigned to it to the new default VM directory. If it's missing, add it to the bottom of the file
and save your work. Quit VMWare Fusion if it is running. Start VMWare fusion and attempt to create a new VM, anything
will do. Once done - check that the files have ended up in the new default VM directory.
Finally -- quit VMWare Fusion again, and move the contents of ~/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized to your new
default VM directory.
cd /Users/MY_USERNAME/VirtualMachines/VMWareFusion
mv "/Users/MY_USERNAME/Virtual Machines.localized/*" ./
rmdir "/Users/MY_USERNAME/Virtual Machines.localized"
Start VMWare Fusion again and you should see any pre-existing VMs available in the Virtual Machine manager.
done