PC Archicad 15 on a MAC with Parallels

[Anonymous]

this is how a company I'm trying to do a short term contract for does their archicad. Why they do it this way is not my concern and is out of my hands.

I was able to load PC AC 15 on my 2011 MacBook Pro, using Parallels, an I can open the program, however, every time I try to access a teamwork file from the BIM server I get a message like "your computer does not have enough memory for this operation".

My laptop is pretty new, I don't have huge amounts of movies, or large files, I've added memory to the virtual machine, but I just don't know what else to try.

Any ideas?

[Anonymous]

attached is a shot of my about this computer.

[Anonymous]

the last thing I'm going to do is make someone in the office with a laptop who claims to be able to open these files open them. I'm not sure I believe it.

I find it hard to believe that my new(ish) machine can't accommodate this, but I'll try a small TW file and see what happens there. I don't want to upgrade RAM, but is that an option?

[Karl Ottenstein]

4 GB is minimal for a system that is running Parallels and OS X apps. How much of that did you allocated to your Parallels VM - 3 GB?

Your free hard disk space has nothing to do with Parallels per se. It only accesses its VM file - which represents the virtual hard disk for the VM, but it can automatically expand that file as-needed.

Yes, do check the other machines to see how they are able to access the file ... and the other Parallels VM specs.

Did you even try to join the project from AC 15 running on your Mac? If you don't make changes, send/receive, etc., but just join, look around, and leave, you won't have any impact on the file. But, then you can at least be sure that your networking setup is OK and that you can join the project. (And, frankly, I wouldn't waste any more time/money on AC-on-Parallels, but rather press this firm for why they are doing it as they are. Encourage them to contact me privately if they have questions, as I truly believe they are digging a hole for themselves.)

Cheers,
Karl

[Anonymous]

they are 100% digging a hole for themselves. This is a short, short, short term contract, I was supposed to drop in, knock out some details for CD's and everybody gets on with their lives. It doesn't matter why they do this nonsensical AC on parallels thing because after I leave they will continue to do it this way. You're correct in your assessment, I'm just saying.

If we can figure out how to access their windows based server from my mac side( a windows server I believe is at the root of this whole windows debacle) maybe we can work something out, but I think I'm at the end of my interest in investigating. I've only got a couple weeks on this contract, and I think we'll just shift non-production people to other desktops for the remainder of the contract.

Both of you who had answers, thanks very much. I feel like we got really, really close to figuring this out. C'est la vie.

[Ralph Wessel]

Arlouper wrote:
I find it hard to believe that my new(ish) machine can't accommodate this, but I'll try a small TW file and see what happens there. I don't want to upgrade RAM, but is that an option?

If you are working with largish TW projects, I don't think you have adequate RAM to access them via a Windows VM under Parallels. I suspect that ArchiCAD would want the total amount of RAM installed on your laptop dedicated to Windows alone, but you are also running Parallels and the Mac OS. If you allocate too much to Parallels, your whole machine will start to run at a snail's pace.

RAM should be cheap - it's worth taking a look at what an upgrade from someone like Crucial would cost.

BootCamp may be another alternative - that would enable you to dedicate all the resources of your laptop to Windows alone.

[Anonymous]

Ralph and Karl,

Thanks for your help. I may upgrade my RAM, because this seems like a good reason to do so, but ultimately I'm just going to make sure I have all the facts about the systems involved before I take another contract like this.

Thanks,
Mickey

[Anonymous]

I collaborate with a pc network using Archicad 15 (64bit) on a Macbook Pro- no problems. As long as I don't plug the machine in direct to their ethernet the IT boys dont seem to mind.
I also run Revit 2012 on Window 7 64bit via Bootcamp - only 4G of Ram but perfromance ok as long as the project is not huge but time to invest in more RAM nevertheless.
VM Ware or Parallels would need 8G at least. The boot time between MacOS and Windows not too bad as long as I am not switching often.

[Anonymous]

Me again. I ended up upgrading my RAM from 4 to 8 GB and for the last 2 or 3 weeks the system has worked fine. Today, all of a sudden, I now have a bad preferences file (which I deleted) and now am back to getting the "machine does not have enough memory" error again.

I have devoted 6GB to the virtual machine, the xp virtual disk has been defragmented, I am at my wits end with this.

The other thing that I don't understand: I ran the Mac Activity Monitor while starting up archicad and while trying to send and recieve parallels went from about 20% of cpu usage to 103%. is there a way to slow down the send and recieve or something?

[Anonymous]

one last question, should I break down and install bootcamp, and how much of a pain in the rear is that going to be for me?

[Ralph Wessel]

Arlouper wrote:
Me again. I ended up upgrading my RAM from 4 to 8 GB and for the last 2 or 3 weeks the system has worked fine. Today, all of a sudden, I now have a bad preferences file (which I deleted) and now am back to getting the "machine does not have enough memory" error again.

I have devoted 6GB to the virtual machine, the xp virtual disk has been defragmented, I am at my wits end with this.

The other thing that I don't understand: I ran the Mac Activity Monitor while starting up archicad and while trying to send and recieve parallels went from about 20% of cpu usage to 103%. is there a way to slow down the send and recieve or something?

I wouldn't allocate more than 50% of your installed RAM to a virtual machine - it is likely to cause performance problems for the whole. It sounds to me as if something has been corrupted in your project - this can cause all kinds of errors (including "not enough memory"), but the messages are misleading, i.e. the problem can't be fixed with more memory. Is the project working normally on another machine?

It's quite normal for activity to go up to 100% or more during processor-intensive activities. Handbrake can push mine up to around 750%. Was it 20% formerly and has only recently short up to the higher figure?