Archicad 25 optimizing for Mac

[Kans]

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.

[Eduardo Rolon]

AC25 does not use OpenGL it has full Metal support.

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

[Kans]

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

[Eduardo Rolon]

OpenGL was deprecated so it is obsolete.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

[genarch]

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.

[Minh Nguyen]

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

[JohnSmillieArchitect]

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

[genarch]

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.

[Minh Nguyen]

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

[JohnSmillieArchitect]

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?