Apple M1 Chips


Steve-C
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Same answer as Greg as I am waiting till the pro versions are running them but everything I read gets me excited for down the road.  However I will mention that I ordered one for my wife to replace her previous model mbp 13" and it should be here next week and I plan on loading chief to see how the thing runs out of curiosity.  I will try to update here once I have played with it.

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1 minute ago, rgardner said:

Same answer as Greg as I am waiting till the pro versions are running them but everything I read gets me excited for down the road.  However I will mention that I ordered one for my wife to replace her previous model mbp 13" and it should be here next week and I plan on loading chief to see how the thing runs out of curiosity.  I will try to update here once I have played with it.

I'm looking forward to hearing about it

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I'm only wanting the upgraded MacBook Air. I have the early 2020 model for site measuring and meetings. It's great for site measuring but the graphics are sorely lacking for meetings. Apple claims a boost of up to 5x over the intel based MacBook Air and the initial benchmarks seem to suggest that is the case. My only concern is Rosetta, but if it runs CA as well as some of the photo editing software we could be in for a pleasant surprise. 

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  • 2 months later...

Hi, folks! Any updates from people who might have tried Chief on and M1 Mac using Rosetta? I'd be grateful for insights whether it works at all... Like Steve-C, this would be for relatively lightweight work like site surveys. As a point of reference, I'm presently using a 2010 MBP 13", so the bar is low... 

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Chief works quite well with a large model on the wife's m1 MBP 13".  Didn't test it extensively but works well what I did test.  No real lag for 3d but again did not test extensively as it is her work computer and I have been busy.

 

That being said I still would recommend waiting till later for m2 and other more robust computers to come out if you use this professionally or as your main computer.  There is a rumor of a lighter weight Mac Pro desktop version which might just be the perfect version for Chief???

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Thanks for the input RGardner! It's helpful to hear that your preliminary experience with the M1 MBP was encouraging. 

 

I agree that it would be wise to wait for the m2, but probably don't have that luxury. My ancient MBP is starting to be unstable and would (at minimum) need a replacement battery. This won't be my primary work machine, so getting something soon is more of a priority. My hope is that the m1 laptop will work well enough for field visits. I'll try to remember to report back in this thread once I have some time with Chief on the new machine.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just got a brand new M1 MacBook Pro 13" to work at home when necessary. I have a 2017 27" iMac at the office as my main computer. I would have waited for Apple to upgrade the MacBook Pro 16", or even the iMac, but my workload is such that I needed a home machine immediately rather than waiting until late summer/fall. I digress. Chief is working well. Everything is speedy on Rosetta 2. The only issue I'm discovering is that Physically Based camera views do not work. Screenshots below of a Physically Based camera view of a kitchen and the actual view taken from my iMac. I understand that Chief Architect is not currently supporting M1, but can anyone confirm if this is because of the GPU? Anyone having this issue with an M1 mini?  

Screen Shot 2021-02-20 at 7.19.02 PM.png

Kitchen 1-29.jpg

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Very keen to seen the outcome here - M1 Air is arriving this week and will report on what works or what doesn't. Just targeting the Home Designer level here, but figure more data points on this topic will be useful for everyone on the thread. I was buoyed by regardner's findings, but worried by HayleyM's issue. CA tech support was very clear about not supporting M1...but want to try it all the same.

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Ok - I’m confused I guess about the M1 Mac.  I remember Chief stating that this Apple config would not support “real time” rendering. But - based on that I figured the M1 would still perform Physical Based Rendering...but just not in real time. 

 

But it appears it won’t even perform PBR at all.  Is this correct? 

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19 hours ago, SNestor said:

Ok - I’m confused I guess about the M1 Mac.  I remember Chief stating that this Apple config would not support “real time” rendering. But - based on that I figured the M1 would still perform Physical Based Rendering...but just not in real time. 

 

But it appears it won’t even perform PBR at all.  Is this correct? 

@SNestor It is my understanding that the Physically Based camera view is different than the Real Time Ray Trace (which is the new, Windows 10 only feature). They are both camera views but one is actually a ray trace. I'm not enough of a computer person to understand the back end differences but I think the overall issue is that Chief Architect developers don't yet have enough information about the M1 GPU and its drivers. I believe this is why neither the PBR camera view or the  RTRT works. But again, don't quote me! 

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@HayleyM summed it up well as far as I understood it from talking to CA tech support about M1 use now and in the future. They were noncommittal about future M1 support (but maybe it will come?) and unequivocally recommended Windows 10 going forward for the real-time ray tracing. Physically based ray tracing should continue to work for Intel Macs on the X13 release.

Edited by benriver
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/18/2020 at 4:03 PM, Steve-C said:

Anyone using a new Apple machine with an M1 chip? From what I've seen on Youtube photo editing software is running extremely well through Rosetta 2. I'm curious to see how CA runs with Rosetta.


Just FYI...

I recently sent an email to Chief asking for clarification regarding the new Apple M1 chip...and generally their support for the new Apple silicon. 

 

I received an email from Chief today and was told unequivocally that - Chief will NOT run on the new Apple Silicon (M1) chipset. 

That's right, Chief will not run on an Apple computer if it uses Apple silicon. WILL NOT RUN!. 

 

This really hurts as my current iMac is about 7 years old...and I was holding out for a new iMac and the new apple silicon. Now...not sure what I'm going to do as a new computer is becoming more and more necessary. Old iMac runs everything fantastic...just a bit slow running Chief. 

 

I cannot see myself ever purchasing a PC running windows :wacko:

What's an Apple user to do?

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I was in the same boat as you Steve... actually I just replaced my late 2013 iMac with very similar specs as yours. I opted for a 2020 Intel-based iMac for now. I decided to lease this machine from Apple on a two year term so I can upgrade again when Apple starts supporting real-time raytracing. That should also give Chief time to figure out what they need to do to run on the Apple chips! Plus I anticipate the Intel based iMacs will lose some resale value once the iMac line gets the M chips, so that was another reason I chose to lease vs buy.

Not an ideal scenario, but I too didn't feel like going back to PC.

Just as an FYI, I think you'll be forced to upgrade if you want to run X13 at all. The new rendering engine will require a Metal maxOS GPU family 2 card, which my 2013 iMac did not have.

As I said, I fully anticipate that Chief will eventually run on the M1 or subsequent chips, maybe just not as soon as we'd like. 

 

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9 hours ago, SNestor said:

Chief will NOT run on the new Apple Silicon (M1) chipset. 

 

Is that in reference to X13? Because people have already reported that X12 runs fine through Rosetta 2, with the exception of PBR

 

I find this odd since apparently Universal 2 makes it "easy" for developers to compile fat binaries of their program that will run natively on x86 and ARM machines

 

??

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1 hour ago, Chrisb222 said:

 

Is that in reference to X13? Because people have already reported that X12 runs fine through Rosetta 2, with the exception of PBR

 

I find this odd since apparently Universal 2 makes it "easy" for developers to compile fat binaries of their program that will run natively on x86 and ARM machines

 

??


You will have to ask Chief...all I know is what I was told. Very disappointed to say the least. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I actually bailed on Apple, I'm tired of having all my eggs in that one basket. I've been back and forth between operating systems for years but I'm vacating Apple for good. I'm not really thrilled with the direction they are heading in a number of areas....

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Not gloating but that whole closed architecture approach

can leave one up the proverbial tributary without adequate

means of propulsion.

 

The grass is always greener.....

 

For equal time Windows 10 is no bed of roses either. 

 

 

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11 hours ago, Rich_Winsor said:

For equal time Windows 10 is no bed of roses either. 

For sure! How many times has "Update Tuesday" wrecked something on my system. Why does Windows 10 believe it knows how I want my desktop icons arranged better than me? I finally just quit putting them back where I wanted them (grouped logically, of course) and let Windows do what it wants to. Maybe Linux was a better idea.:unsure:

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  • 3 months later...

Small architectural office with 3 staff using Chief. After wavering and reading different posts about this for a while, we were thinking we could use M1 Mac minis for daily work flow, and keep a PC for times we wanted to do physically based rendering. Real Time Ray Trace is something that we aren't anticipating using regularly in our work flow in the near future.

 

But... We'll be returning the M1 Mac mini. Even the Standard camera view in x12 is not working for us. (See the attached screen recording.) 

 

Unsure whether this could be fixed, but it doesn't seem like it will be worth the time and headache to troubleshoot this issue. Maybe the next generation 'M2' chips and/or X14 will bring Apple & Chief back into sync...?

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