topic Re: Archicad 25 optimizing for Mac in Installation & update

Archicad 25 optimizing for Mac

Kans — Fri, 26 May 2023 00:40:23 GMT

I recognise, that 2D Work with Mac is very fast, due to Metal from Apple.
But I think, the 3D Work with OpenGL is little bit slow.
Is there any suggestion for better work with Mac for Archicad 25?
Sorry for bad english.

Re: Archicad 25 optimizing for Mac

Eduardo Rolon — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 11:35:10 GMT

AC25 does not use OpenGL it has full Metal support.

https://graphisoft.com/solutions/archicad/archicad-25

Re: Archicad 25 optimizing for Mac

Kans — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 11:59:41 GMT

You think, Metal is better than OpenGL in 3D?

Re: Archicad 25 optimizing for Mac

Eduardo Rolon — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 14:03:21 GMT

OpenGL was deprecated so it is obsolete.
So there is no other choice from 25 forward.

Re: Archicad 25 optimizing for Mac

genarch — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 17:47:37 GMT

I have opened the same building model in AC24 and AC25. 3D navigation in AC24 is smooth while navigation in AC25 is slow and choppy. So much so that I cannot accurately navigate and I use 3D so often that I've gone back to using AC24 rather than 25.

Re: Archicad 25 optimizing for Mac

Minh Nguyen — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 10:36:13 GMT

Hello,

Thank you very much for the report and I am very sorry about the experience!

For a deeper investigation, may I ask for the original file in Archicad 24 format for in-house replication? Please let me know if you need a secure place to upload the file also!

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Best regards,

Minh

Re: Archicad 25 optimizing for Mac

JohnSmillieArchitect — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 11:13:39 GMT

I have experienced the same problem with AC25 - as soon as I show shadows in the 3D window, navigation is slow and jerky

Re: Archicad 25 optimizing for Mac

genarch — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 16:44:09 GMT

John, you're right, it's the shadows in the 3D window! I didn't even take the time to try and figure it out. Who wants to waste billable hours trouble-shooting Graphisoft's issues? As soon as I saw it was choppy I went back to v24. Today, though, I decided to see if it was the shadow casting and, sure enough, once I turn them off the 3D navigation is butter smooth again.

Minh, thanks for the offer to look into it. I don't think you'll need my model. Just try turning on shadows in the 3D window and see if that slows navigation.

Re: Archicad 25 optimizing for Mac

Minh Nguyen — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 07:33:52 GMT

Dear all,

Thank you very much for the information, this is very helpful to me!

We had another similar report in our system. Thankfully, we already had an explanation for this behavior:

In Archicad 23/24 shadows were not rendered completely due to OpenGL 3.3 limitations. That is, after a certain amount of memory consumption, the program simply ignored shadow rendering. This might create a situation when you have a complex object and shadow fails to display correctly in 3D.

Since Archicad 25 however, shadows are displayed completely (as in for every object), which is similar to how it was in Archicad 20 or previous. The downside is, it will slow down rendering quite a lot, but you will have a correct shadow presentation in 3D environment.

Thus, we suggest turning off shadow in 3D if the computer has limited resources or if it causes slowness with your 3D navigation. I hope that it explains the situation here, and thank you very much for your understanding!

Best regards,

Minh

Re: Archicad 25 optimizing for Mac

JohnSmillieArchitect — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 06:54:53 GMT

Hi Nguyen - I am surprised to hear that 16gb of RAM is not enough, what do you think is the minimum RAM one should have for AC25?

Re: Archicad 25 optimizing for Mac

Minh Nguyen — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 07:32:56 GMT

Hello,

Thank you for your question!

It very much depends on the model complexity, library objects' detailed level and other factors. Based on this, it is possible that 16GB of RAM is not enough. Also, the CPU calculation power is also very important (I should have used "resources" rather than "memory").

Best regards,

Minh

Re: Archicad 25 optimizing for Mac

JohnSmillieArchitect — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 08:26:41 GMT

Yes I understand - I guess the new M1 chips from Apple will help - do you have any feedback on how AC25 runs on the M1?

Re: Archicad 25 optimizing for Mac

Minh Nguyen — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 12:17:09 GMT

Hello,

We haven't done any official test with Archicad 25 on M1 chip, but we expect a similar result between Archicad 24 and 25. Of course, in some specific cases like in this one, it could be slower than Archicad 24. When we carried out the test for Archicad 24 and M1, we concluded that the M1 can only handle small to medium projects. We expect that the new chip coming from Apple later this year would provide more headroom for bigger size projects.

Best regards,

Minh

Re: Archicad 25 optimizing for Mac

genarch — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 14:51:32 GMT

I’m running 8-cores with 32GB RAM and that wasn’t enough for shadows!