AC11 slow on new Mac Pro's and Imacs

[Anonymous]

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

[Erich]

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

[Thomas Holm]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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

[Thomas Holm]

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.

[Anonymous]

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

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.