Is AC14 going to work in 64bit on MACs?

[Anonymous]

This is the System Requirements for running AC14 on a MAC from Graphisoft Web page:

CPU:.... "*Note: ArchiCAD 14 for Mac ia a 32-bit application which runs with either 32-bit or 64-bit processors. The next version of ArchiCAD however will be 64-bit only, and will not support 32-bit processors."

I like to think Graphisoft misspelled AC14 instead of AC13 and the next version they refer to is AC14, or we will have to wait until AC15 comes out????

[Karl Ottenstein]

The information released so far is that AC 14 on the Mac is still a 32 bit application, but that BIM Server is 64 bit.

Even 32 bit ArchiCAD on Mac can address more memory than 32 bit ArchiCAD on Windows though. See:
http://www.archicadwiki.com/64-bit

So, the lack of 64 bit on Mac is not a significant issue except for firms with extremely large models.

Cheers,
Karl

[Laszlo Nagy]

Let me add this to Karl's comment:
There may be a perception that 64-bit AC on Mac will be significantly faster than the 32-bit version. This is not the case, except for maybe 10-15 percent.
The main advantage of a 64-bit version is the capability of handling more memory.

[Anonymous]

The thing is that some times my computer runs out of memory when processing light work renderings and I have a pretty good computer.

In the current down turn of the economy my boss was planning in doing the upgrade thinking that we would get the 64-bit support but in this case I am not sure if we will get AC14.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Hi Fran,

Your Mac has only 4 GB of memory anyway - so 64 bit would not add much. (It would allow bigger models, but because of only 4 GB of memory, your computer would be swapping to disk a lot for virtual memory.) 4 GB is the amount that 32 bit AC can address. But, of course, OS X itself and other running apps need memory too.

Do you have ample free space on your hard disk?

Have you tried your file on a different Mac that has more memory?

Sometimes the 'out of memory' error is something else, too...

Cheers,
Karl

[Anonymous]

Hi Karl,

This is what I have:

The MAIN Hard Drive (Mac-03) with114 GB free;

The second internal HD (G+U Backup Drive) with 53GB free, (for my time machine back-up);

And and External HD (Mac-03 My Book) with 1.82TB free for all my old files (2001 to 2008) + a second back-up from recent files.

Do you think more RAM would help? I've tried the same operation in an other computer with the same configuration as mine and the computer couldn't handle the rendering as well.

Thank you for your help,
F.S.

[Karl Ottenstein]

fransole wrote:
The MAIN Hard Drive (Mac-03) with114 GB free;
...

Do you think more RAM would help? I've tried the same operation in an other computer with the same configuration as mine and the computer couldn't handle the rendering as well.

The main (boot) hard drive is where your virtual memory swap file will be, and you have plenty of free space, so we can rule that out as an issue.

I've seen this 'out of memory' error reported here, but cannot recall the resolution - but I believe it was related to a model issue. Have you run the PolyCount add-on to see how many polygons are in your model? Maybe someone else remembers?

See these posts / threads:

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=107906

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=26820

If those do not help, you might contact tech support and send them your file to analyze.

Cheers,
Karl

PS I don't know that 64 bit ArchiCAD does anything to the LightWorks engine? So, LW might still have issues. So many hassles with LW, that I prefer Artlantis ... but, I know, more $$...