Mac OS - What does this mean?

[Stress Co_]

Attached is a screen shot of Apple's "Activity Monitor" (CPU tab)
It's what was going on while Archicad was opening a 3D window (the spinning pinwheel of death was on screen).

I laymen's terms.... what does it mean?

Time to upgrade to a faster processor?

The 3D window eventually opened .... but it took a very long time.

[Dwight]

The Spinning Wheel of Death Explained Desk Replies:

The Activity Monitor is telling you that Archicad is so occupied with work it doesn't have time for frivolous queries like "How's it going,eh?"

Archicad will do this whenever it is trying hard to figure out or render your model. Was this a particularly complex model? How many polygons?

[Stress Co_]

Dwight wrote:
The Activity Monitor is telling you that Archicad is so occupied with work it doesn't have time for frivolous queries like "How's it going,eh?"

It only asks that in the Canadian Version.

Dwight wrote:
Was this a particularly complex model? How many polygons?

Not so much.. mostly it's the site mesh. 7,232 total

I did find some corrupt objects (wallbuilder addon). Deleting them speeded things up.

I just added 4Gb ram. Maybe it's just time to upgrade,.... to a 24" iMac?

[Dwight]

Corrupt elements!
They are everywhere and if you don't pay them off, no heat or elevator before 0700.

[Thomas Holm]

Stress wrote:
I laymen's terms.... what does it mean?

Archicad is essentially a single-threaded application. That means that it does one thing at a time.

If something takes a lot of time, it doesn't answer queries from you or from the operating system until that thing is finished.

This is one of the best arguments for using an externl renderer (outside of Archicad) - you can go on working on your design while the renderer works in the background.