topic Re: AC11 slow on new Mac Pro's and Imacs in Installation & update

AC11 slow on new Mac Pro's and Imacs

Anonymous — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 23:04:44 GMT

This is my first post. We recently (about a month ago) converted from Windows based PC's to Macs (Mac pro's 2.66 GHZ Quad-core) and Imacs.
We have installed all latest Mac OS updates and AC11 updates but our Archicad is painfully slow on the Macs. The disturbing beachball appears for a few minutes whenever I copy an element, when saving and generally feels slower than our older windows PC,s. Any advice?? this is particularly frustrating because we bought the macs under the impression that they will perform better than the PC's.
Regards,
Francis

Re: AC11 slow on new Mac Pro's and Imacs

Erich — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 03:37:29 GMT

Several things come to mind...

First, there have been many posts here on speed issues with AC 11, especially relative to earlier versions. Just search. Also, if any of your files are updated from earlier versions there have been documented issues with speed that sound very similar to what you are experiencing. In AC 10 there was both a PPC and an Intel mac versions. I am not certain if that is still the case in AC11. Perhaps someone here that knows more than I can clarify that point. If so make certain you have the correct version for your machines.

HTH

Re: AC11 slow on new Mac Pro's and Imacs

Thomas Holm — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 07:05:35 GMT

Erich wrote:
In AC 10 there was both a PPC and an Intel mac versions. I am not certain if that is still the case in AC11.

It is the case in AC 11 too. On an Intel Mac, both versions will run, but the PPC version will be very slow due to that many processes have to be translated for the processor by the MacOSXsystem routine Rosetta.

Therefore, always install the Mac Intel version of Archicad on such a machine. It's optimised for the Intel processor.

Re: AC11 slow on new Mac Pro's and Imacs

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 20:38:35 GMT

Mac Pro's may not be the best machine for running AC 11 because of the relationship between the Zeon Processors and it's FBDIMMS which is critical for best performance, for a detailed explanation of how Mac Pro's work go to www.anandtech.com click on the Mac tab and scroll down to the 3 articles on the Mac Pro, even as a year old they are still relevant, careful adjustment of the FBDIMMS may help performance.

An iMac is basically a laptop with the case turned through 360deg ie folded back on itself, it has laptop processors which are not as powerful as desktop models. It does however have 3.5" HDD's as opposed to laptop 2.5" HDD's, Appleinsider reports there have been some problems with condensation behind the glass in the latest models.

Re: AC11 slow on new Mac Pro's and Imacs

Anonymous — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 11:17:12 GMT

this is particularly frustrating because we bought the macs under the impression that they will perform better than the PC's
Francis

...us too

We’re also having speed issues but w/ AC10 (intel version). Our project file is only about 25MB but we’re still getting the rainbow wheel for long stretches of time (2 to 3 mins average, sometimes longer). We have 2 machines with the same configuration, noted below, and our AC is maddeningly slow, especially on one of them (which happens to be the one that will only have one other application running (Studiometry – a time keeping software)). We were running the non-intel version of AC10 up to a month ago - switched to the intel version of AC10 after being told that it would run faster as it runs ‘native’… The speed on my computer hasn’t improved, and the speed on my colleague’s computer has reduced.

Mac Pro's may not be the best machine for running AC 11 because of the relationship between the Zeon Processors and it's FBDIMMS which is critical for best performance

I have spoken with our IT consultant in regards to the above: it seems that many workstation PCs also run on Xeon and FBDIMMS - look on the Dell site for their configs. This is really a major problem - we have spent over £5500 for each computer (hardware alone + AC) and we’re drumming our fingers waiting for a 25MB project to update. It's just not good enough. If this really is the root cause of this problem then I would say that the onus is on Graphisoft to resolve this issue for it’s users.

The anandtech.com site is offline right now – our IT consultant will be coming to adjust the FBDIMMS as Chris has suggested. Any other suggestions?

Thanks

Re: AC11 slow on new Mac Pro's and Imacs

Thomas Holm — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 12:48:40 GMT

I'm sorry, but the lack of answers in this thread suggests that the problems you experience are not common.
AC11 is better optimised for MacIntel than AC10, so I'd suggest an upgrade if you use that.

The FBDIMM 'latency penalty' mentioned regarding the MacPro's is problably not the culprit. It could diminish the performance of some processes by single-figure percentages, but not cause spinning beachballs to the extent you mention.

There may be other suggestions, but I guess you've already done a search in this forum. All I can come up with is general advice:

- check that you've applied Apple's latest system updates (10.4.xx).

- check that you don't have unnecessary background processes running. For example, a new Mac with a lot of data on the hard disks spends time for Spotlight indexing. Also, if you often connect/disconnect external drives, exclude them from indexing with Spotlight's system settings.

- Check that you have enough free space on the internal start-up hard drive. I'd recommend at least 20% free.

- Optimise your system (clean caches, update system databases etc) regular, for example using a third-party free utility program like OnyX http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/download.html (do NOT use the betas). There is an 'Automate' option in Onyx that is quite convenient.

- Use a font manager (I recommend Linotype's free FontexplorerX http://www.linotype.com/fontexplorerX ) to trim your system from unneeded fonts. Just Apple's system fonts and the ones you frequently use should be active.

- In Archicad, check that you don' t have excessive libraries loaded, and that the default (AC11's delivered and if you need to use AC10 files, the AC10 subset library) libraries are installed with Archicad on the local workstation. Only office libraries that frequently change should be loaded from a network server.

- If you've done all of the above, and Archicad still is slow, re-install Archicad, carefully checking the right options.

- When Graphisoft tells us it's safe (they will in this forum), upgrade your machines to Leopard. It's better optimised for Intel and may help.

Re: AC11 slow on new Mac Pro's and Imacs

Anonymous — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 14:06:25 GMT

Why are we all working on Sunday ?

I agree with Thomas that any percentage gain in speed is likely to be in single figures.

My experience with Macs is limited to my MacBook on which AC11 works quite well and I have not had this spinning beachball for more than a few seconds. I have the MacBook as my backup machine. I have been looking at Macs and reading up as I am considering moving to an iMac rather than go through the whole Vista upgrade performance.

On my windows machine I have noticed that projects started in other versions seem to run slower than those started natively in AC 11 have you have brought this project from a previous version say 8.1 or 9 or is native in 10.

The problem sounds more like a software problem that a processor one to me.

AC11 (Int) Win XP SP2 P4 2.8Ghz 3Gb ram 320Gb HDD
MB 2.0Ghz 1Gb ram Tiger 10.4.10

Re: AC11 slow on new Mac Pro's and Imacs

Anonymous — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 15:02:22 GMT

2 further thoughts, in case you haven't already done this:

1. Did you start this project from scratch or is it based on a surveyors AutoCAD (or similar) drawing because if so you might try the following, back up several times, locate the survey drawing and put it all onto a single layer then go to attribute manager and purge, it might speed things up a bit

2. I am wondering if the two of you are working on the same project using TeamWork because if you are check that all your permissions etc are set up correctly, this is without any knowledge of TeamWork as I work on my own and don't use it.

Remember back up before you do any purging.

Re: AC11 slow on new Mac Pro's and Imacs

Anonymous — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 17:09:53 GMT

Thomas, thank you for all your suggestions - i especially like the part about external hard drives and indexing etc. - even though we run AC on our own machines, we are connected to the rest of the office (admin/accounts/etc) thru a server which we don't have to be connected to all day.

I wish i could find an IT guy/gal who also knows Archicad so that they could optimize our workstations....know anyone in London?

Chris, this project was started from scratch but i also imported the survey drawings from an Autocad file. i will do as you suggest and purge them.

Would you suggest purging all unused fills, composites, lines etc. using the Attributes window?

Thanks again
Moj

There is no Sunday, every day is a workday...or is every day a play-day.

Re: AC11 slow on new Mac Pro's and Imacs

Anonymous — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 19:35:16 GMT

You could I suppose but I've never actually purged anything else apart from the layers, I would certainly make a backup before I started purging anything even though the purged items are supposed to be saved to an .aat file because funny things can happen.

Take hot spots for starters, I found out the hard way, with AC 6 I think, that select and delete all hotspots deleted a few objects which contained hotspots as well, I did not notice this for some time as they were not in the part of the screen I was looking at, so proceed with a lot of caution.

An odd thing happened when I went to print a set of about 25 drawings last week, one drawing would not print, I tried everything I knew including rebuilding the draing from save current view etc and no print. I tried restarting the machine etc and just as I had given up and support was to call me back I managed to crash the machine - it has a dodgy southbridge heatsink, and when I started it up again the drawing printed no bother.

Think back, has it been getting progressively slower or did it just start to slow down after you did some action or added in an object. I once got a series of runtime errors with I think it was AC 8.1 which turned out to be a badly written object I had downloaded from some site.

Enjoy the rest of your day off.

Re: AC11 slow on new Mac Pro's and Imacs

Thomas Holm — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 23:02:16 GMT

Chris is absolutely right. Purging unused attributes won't speed anything up (they're unused, aren't they?) but they might be used in some object so don't purge unless you need to for some other reason.

Surveyor's files are often excessively big. Perhaps this tip might help:
http://www.archicadwiki.com/TechNotes/Handle_huge_surveyors%27_drawings?highlight=%28TechNotes/%29%7C%28CategoryInputOutput%29

If you need to import them, use the XREF or hotlinked module feature so you can turn their display off. If that doesn't workk for you, set up layer combinations for the same function.

Other slowdown culprits are big bit-maps, scanned images, jpgs, tiff-files or pdfs containing such. Also, using the Virtual Trace feature ("ghost" in earlier versions) can slow Archicad down.

And Chris is also right that some faulty GDL object can be the culprit.

If you need an Archicad consultant, talk to your reseller or Graphisoft's England rep!

Re: AC11 slow on new Mac Pro's and Imacs

owen — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 23:15:05 GMT

I would suspect a network problem is more likely the cause of spinning wheel issues.

If you had a look at network traffic logs you would be surprised at just how 'chatty' ArchiCAD is - and if there is a delay in response due to a congested network or whatever, ArchiCAD will usually stall until it gets what it is looking for. License checking is particularly bad .. they make damn sure you will not get more than a couple of seconds if you don't have a license available.

I am currently in an office of 50 and the network is really being pushed. Frequent short periods of spinning wheel are so common people have stopped complaining about it .. its just what happens. Things have been tweaked and the situation improved a little but its still happens too often.

I've also had the same situation with a client (office of 15) whose network was well overdue for an upgrade (eg. large parts were not yet Gigabit Ethernet). Spinning wheel pretty much went hand in hand with an copy, save, send & receive ..... After upgrading the server and network infrastructure this problem was gone.

[Edit: I read the first post again - this is matches the most common problem these guys were having. FYI Copy & Save are two big license check flags, and then there is actually sending the file data over the network (25MB should not be a problem though).

Are you running off a network license key? If you are as a quick test to see if this problem is network based, try installing the network key onto one of the clients, disconnect from the network and work with the file on just that machine so all license checks are local. You should also make sure you are loading libraries locally, and that there is nothing in the file that will make AC try to make a network connection (hotlink module checks, titleblocks, etc). If everything is fine doing this then i would look at your network or server - are they up to the loads being put on them (hard to say without knowing how many people you have and what applications you are running). If the problem persists working locally then look at purging/rebuilding the file as others have suggested.

hope this helps

Re: AC11 slow on new Mac Pro's and Imacs

ksjhawk — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:19:53 GMT

Its great to see everyone weighing in, but we too are slowly moving to AC11 and experiencing delay between commands, slow save times, etc...i have a Mac Pro, I have installed the Intel version of AC11, and am working off of an individual key...i've tried adjusting settings, minimized and consolidated libraries, nothing seems to help...nothing more frustrating when you are motoring along, there's a delay and the software is three steps behind...i am working on a file originally created in AC10 and have not tried anything along the lines of wholesale copy paste from 10 to 11, would that even have legs though?...to be fair too, we are using a network log in system, which isn't exactly optimized, but that doesn't say much to the speed of AC11, when AC10 is pretty fast...

all this being said, if its any consolation, we have been with AC since 6.5, on macs, and it seems with each release, the mac version of the software lags behind, the software itself is incomplete, people complain and eventually it gets fixed, just in time for the next release...

keep the info coming though, and i'd love to hear Graphisoft's take on any of this rather than just our hypotheses ...

thanks...

Re: AC11 slow on new Mac Pro's and Imacs

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:35:28 GMT

hello, everyone, since this is my first contribution (sort- of) to the forum...

I have experienced problems you are discussing on one particular project but- on pc (dual core, 2mb ram, 256 nvidia)! as far as I could tell, thing is in network, external drawings and possibly gdl- objects related, not necessarily in the way program is working on particular machine.... now, if you can make anything out of this, fine....