LevisL Posted October 21, 2019 Share Posted October 21, 2019 I bought a new MacBook Pro this summer as a secondary machine for the times I'm out of my office and away from my iMac. I opted for the 13" model rather than the 15" for several reasons, but mainly for portability and price difference. I knew going into this that I would probably feel a performance hit by only having the Intel Integrated graphics, but I thought it would be livable (e.g.: I wasn't expecting to be able to use it for PBR's and other renderings with lots of lights and shadows). Anyway, after a couple months of using this machine, I'm finding I get a lot of crashes generating section/elevation camera views with the vector view rendering style. This is a big part of creating con docs, so this is a bigger problem than expected. Perspective cameras using the standard rendering style don't seem to be a problem though. I've spoken to tech. support about it and they're saying it's due to the integrated graphics. They had me play around with the render preferences (uncheck global illumination, etc.), but that hasn't helped. I'm just curious if there's any other MacBook Pro users with just the Intel graphics that have similar issues and/or what you've done to address it. I'm hoping I don't need to trade this machine in just yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted October 21, 2019 Share Posted October 21, 2019 Though my laptop is not a Mac it uses an Intel integrated graphics chip HD620, no problems with any of the camera views, just a bit slow with PBR but will do it. Your chip is newer so it should be able to handle everything. You might wish to google this with the Catalina OS, there have been some problems with this new version, not sure if they are graphics related. Have you checked the Iris Plus settings to make sure everything in there is set correctly, In CA preferences, does it recognize the chip and Open GL version. The only other thing I can think of is that you might be blowing the memory, 8 GB is borderline, the integrated chip has maybe 1GB dedicated, when this gets used up it will take main memory if available, if not it will start swapping with the disk. Disk swapping will work but things will slow down. However even with disk swapping there must be enough base memory to at least hold the entire contents of the active window being displayed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LevisL Posted October 22, 2019 Author Share Posted October 22, 2019 Thanks Graham. I updated to Catalina just a couple days ago, which may have worsened the problem, but it was definitely happening before that. As for my preferences in CA, it does recognize the chip and Open GL version. As a test, I ran the activity monitor side-by-side with CA to see if the RAM was maxing out when a crash happened, but that doesn't seem to be the problem. I haven't found anywhere where I can adjust the Iris Plus settings outside of CA. I'll do more research and report back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted October 22, 2019 Share Posted October 22, 2019 11 hours ago, LevisL said: Thanks Graham. I updated to Catalina just a couple days ago, which may have worsened the problem, but it was definitely happening before that. As for my preferences in CA, it does recognize the chip and Open GL version. As a test, I ran the activity monitor side-by-side with CA to see if the RAM was maxing out when a crash happened, but that doesn't seem to be the problem. I haven't found anywhere where I can adjust the Iris Plus settings outside of CA. I'll do more research and report back. I don't know what other things you have running but it does show that 6.7 GB of 8GB are being used, Memory will never show full 8GB usage, the system will start swapping to disk. For example on my laptop, with CA open, my browser and e-mail my main memory usage is 4.7GB. That leaves about 3GB for the graphics should it need it before it starts disk swapping. You might try closing all other non CA programs, check to see how much memory has been freed up and then try you camera views to see if you have gained improved stability. If so then memory is likely the issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve-C Posted October 24, 2019 Share Posted October 24, 2019 For what it's worth, I recently abandoned the Mac OS. As much as I love it I was having too many issues running CA which is mostly what I do. The last 2 Mac OS updates along with the last 2 CA updates have produced a gradual decline in performance for me personally. Conversely, since I started using my 4 year old desktop PC, CA has run flawlessly. Even better than it did when I switched to Mac 3 years ago. It's almost as if CA's focus on performance enhancement has been geared solely (or mostly) towards Windows. On Mac I would get 1 or 2 crashes a week (at least), and that is on 2 different MacBook Pro's over a 3 year span. Since switching to Windows over 2 months ago, I have not had any crashes. My main rig was the most recent and most powerful 15" MacBook Pro with 32gb of RAM before I switched back to Windows. I recently purchased a 15" Surface Book 2 which does not compare favorably to the MB Pro and only has 16gb of RAM, but it blows the doors off the MB Pro especially in 3D rendering. It's hard to say for sure what has happened over the last 3 years other than speculation about OS and software. What I do know is that I got frustrated enough with my shinny new $4k Macbook Pro to drag out my 4 year old PC and the differences in performance were staggering. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Electromen Posted October 24, 2019 Share Posted October 24, 2019 i have zero problems with X11 on Catalini. I'm not using a notebook, I have a 2017 Mac Pro (Garage Can) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LevisL Posted October 25, 2019 Author Share Posted October 25, 2019 On 10/22/2019 at 6:03 AM, TheKitchenAbode said: I don't know what other things you have running but it does show that 6.7 GB of 8GB are being used, Memory will never show full 8GB usage, the system will start swapping to disk. For example on my laptop, with CA open, my browser and e-mail my main memory usage is 4.7GB. That leaves about 3GB for the graphics should it need it before it starts disk swapping. You might try closing all other non CA programs, check to see how much memory has been freed up and then try you camera views to see if you have gained improved stability. If so then memory is likely the issue. I've been monitoring memory usage for the past couple days when I'm using the laptop and right now I'm running very similar to you. CA, browser, and e-mail open and I'm at around 4.6 to 4.8GB used. I have Dropbox and Remote PC running in the background as well. The other day when it showed 6.7GB used, my wife's account had apps open as well and I had just switched users without logging out of her account. That being said, I'm still getting lots of crashes generating section/elevation cameras. Memory usage doesn't spike when crashes happen. Sometimes CA freezes on a white screen with the spinning rainbow wheel (not responding). Other times it shuts down suddenly. I can usually open 1 or 2 section cameras no problem. Then it crashes on subsequent attempts, even if I close the first ones beforehand. Here's a screenshot showing the first part of the crash report the last time it shut down suddenly on me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael_Gia Posted October 26, 2019 Share Posted October 26, 2019 I’ll say it. Chief Architect is no longer compatible with the MacOs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DG1949 Posted October 26, 2019 Share Posted October 26, 2019 1 hour ago, Michael_Gia said: I’ll say it. Chief Architect is no longer compatible with the MacOs. I'm afraid that seems to be true. Very discouraging, since all has been pretty good for quite some time. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted October 26, 2019 Share Posted October 26, 2019 16 hours ago, LevisL said: I can usually open 1 or 2 section cameras no problem. Then it crashes on subsequent attempts, even if I close the first ones beforehand. The fact that you can open 1 or 2 views without any issues seems to indicate that the integrated chip can generate the views. Usually if the graphics chip/card is incompatible you can't even open 1 view without it crashing. The issue appears to be related to the number of active views it can handle at any given point in time. You indicate that it happens even if you close out an existing view in order to keep the active views below say 3, it is possible that when you close out a window that the data is not being flushed out of the graphics memory. It is also possible that for some reason there is an issue when the dedicated graphics memory becomes full that it is failing to swap properly with main system memory. Your integrated chip has 1.5 GB of dedicated memory so it would not take too many active windows to exceed this, it's not just the CA windows but also the windows in the background of any other active programs such as your browser, e-mail client, main OS window, etc.. They are all being held in the graphics memory so when you click on one of those programs they will respond instantly. I think it might be beneficial if you posted a plan that has this problem so we can see if it happens on all systems or is just related to your system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StephenGreene Posted October 26, 2019 Share Posted October 26, 2019 my 2017 macbook pro is doing fine. never an issue. but i haven't upgraded to Catalina either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Electromen Posted October 26, 2019 Share Posted October 26, 2019 4 hours ago, Michael_Gia said: I’ll say it. Chief Architect is no longer compatible with the MacOs. My Mac Pro, NOT a notebook/laptop, but Mac Pro, has had no crashes and works perfectly in Catalina vr. 10.15 It is possible you have a hardware issue? Here's mine: 6 core 3.5GHz 16 GB memory Dual AMD FirePro D500 video cards with 3GB VRAM each 256GB SSD for OS & programs 256GB SSD Storage 4TB HD storage Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SNestor Posted October 26, 2019 Share Posted October 26, 2019 I'm running Catalina on a 5 year old iMac...absolutely no problems with Chief. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LevisL Posted October 28, 2019 Author Share Posted October 28, 2019 On 10/26/2019 at 9:26 AM, StephenGreene said: my 2017 macbook pro is doing fine. never an issue. but i haven't upgraded to Catalina either. Good to know. I'll keep trying to figure out what the issue is. On 10/26/2019 at 2:56 PM, SNestor said: I'm running Catalina on a 5 year old iMac...absolutely no problems with Chief. Same here. The only problems I have are with the MacBook. My 2013 iMac still runs great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve-C Posted October 28, 2019 Share Posted October 28, 2019 I spend 60+ hours a week running CA, since I switched from Mac back to PC it's been heaven. However, I did run only MacBook Pros with a 32" (2500 pixel) external monitor, not an iMac or Mac Pro so I suppose your mileage my vary. Either way, I can't justify the extra cost for Mac hardware any longer, especially not the new Mac Pros.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Electromen Posted October 28, 2019 Share Posted October 28, 2019 Since the Mac OS updates the video card driver through the OS, make sure your OS is up to date. Catilina 10.15 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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