M1 Mac, it does work

[VRNicastro]

I have an M1 MacBook Air 8GB that I installed Chief Architect on. For those of you wondering it does work running under Rosetta 2. I just clicked “install” so I am assuming it’s running under Rosetta. 
No issues drafting. The only slowdown I have experienced is when adding certain things from the library. Kitchen and bath fixtures. 3D rendering. It then becomes sluggish. Once you close the library the sluggishness goes away. This might be because of the lack of a dedicated graphics or only having 8GB total memory.   
Granted, I am new to the software so my experience is limited as far as all the phases of home drafting. 
I then transferred the license to a 2013 IMac 21.5” (Intel) with 16GB ram core i7 with 1GB video ram and it definitely runs better. No sluggishness with library objects or 3D rendering. 
Since I couldn’t find any definitive answers on this subject I figured I would make a post. 
If there is something specific you want me to try, let me know and I’ll report back my experience. 

[Chopsaw]

 

[benriver]

Thanks for the report, VRNicastro- my M1 Air is coming this week w/16GB RAM so will be neat to compare with your findings. It sounds like you were able to get 3D rendering while HayleyM in the other thread was not? Hoping for the best!

[Chrisb222]

Thanks for the report. I for one am very interested.

 

I'll make a few comments in reply, just to add to the conversation.

 

8 hours ago, VRNicastro said:

I have an M1 MacBook Air 8GB that I installed Chief Architect on. For those of you wondering it does work running under Rosetta 2. I just clicked “install” so I am assuming it’s running under Rosetta.

 

It's my understanding that Rosetta 2 is a little different than the original Rosetta in that it translates the software when it's installed, not while it's running. So Rosetta doesn't actually run when you're using the software, only when you first install it, which is supposed to make it faster. At least that's my understanding.

 

8 hours ago, VRNicastro said:

The only slowdown I have experienced is when adding certain things from the library. Kitchen and bath fixtures. 3D rendering. It then becomes sluggish. Once you close the library the sluggishness goes away. This might be because of the lack of a dedicated graphics or only having 8GB total memory.

 

I was afraid of this. I don't think it's the RAM or the graphics. In my experience a translated software program can suffer slowdowns when it has to communicate with objects and features that reside outside the software. In the case of library objects, I assume the software is having to reach out to the native system architecture to retrieve those objects (files). I suspect the same type of slowdown might occur when accessing the font list or other system-level assets.

 

8 hours ago, VRNicastro said:

Granted, I am new to the software so my experience is limited as far as all the phases of home drafting. 
I then transferred the license to a 2013 IMac 21.5” (Intel) with 16GB ram core i7 with 1GB video ram and it definitely runs better. No sluggishness with library objects or 3D rendering.

 

Yeah I think that's because everything's running in the system's native language.

 

8 hours ago, VRNicastro said:

Since I couldn’t find any definitive answers on this subject I figured I would make a post. 
If there is something specific you want me to try, let me know and I’ll report back my experience. 

 

 

Thank you. Good conversation.

 

But shoot, I was hoping the M1 was so fast that there wouldn't be any sluggishness running in Rosetta. Oh well, apparently it's "easy" (they say) for developers to port a dual-binary version of their software that will run native on the M1. Hopefully Chief is doing that soon...

[VRNicastro]

Steve-C made a post about using a MacBook Pro with the M1 but he doesn’t mention how much memory he has. Also the MacBook Pro uses all 8 cores as where as my MacBook Air only uses 7 cores. 
This could make all the difference in rendering especially if he has 16GB of memory. 
Rosetta 2 does the translation from X86 code to ARM code. If I’m not mistaken it’s kinda like emulation software. It would still need to run along side of the program. Someone correct me if I’m wrong. 

[Chrisb222]

52 minutes ago, VRNicastro said:

Rosetta 2 does the translation from X86 code to ARM code. If I’m not mistaken it’s kinda like emulation software. It would still need to run along side of the program. Someone correct me if I’m wrong. 

 

 

Quote

Rosetta 2 .... 

Translates at install, not during execution

 

 

https://appleinsider.com/inside/rosetta-2

 

 

 

 

[VRNicastro]

3 hours ago, Chrisb222 said:

 

 

 

 

https://appleinsider.com/inside/rosetta-2

 

 

 

 

I wonder if when you download additional content will Rosetta know and translate the X86 code to ARM? I understand during the initial install it will but not sure about add ons. 

[VRNicastro]

8 minutes ago, VRNicastro said:

I wonder if when you download additional content will Rosetta know and translate the X86 code to ARM? I understand during the initial install it will but not sure about add ons. 

That article just answered my question. The sluggishness comes from “translate on the fly as needed”

I added additional content after the initial install. 

[benriver]

Hi everyone! So I've had no trouble installing and using Home Designer Suite 2021 (barebones CA x12) on a new Macbook Air M1. It's the top-spec version with 16GB memory and the 8/8 CPU/GPU cores. I'm using the core library, some kitchen and bath manufacturer libraries and made a few custom materials and all seem to be working as planned. I even imported a cabinet maker's .calibz bundle and that's been seamless with structures, textures, countertops, etc.

To be fair, I'm still working with a small model of just 1 floor with a mezzanine and a few open-concept rooms, but wanted to report my findings since it's been tough getting a handle on whether the M1 chip is working or not. I love the machine and feel it's faster than the MBP 16" i9 I was also using to compare. 

I'm happy to try anything out if anyone has specific features to test, just let me know.

Thanks!

Edited February 25, 2021 by benriver
typo

[VRNicastro]

23 minutes ago, benriver said:

Hi everyone! So I've had no trouble installing and using Home Designer Suite 2021 (barebones CA x12) on a new Macbook Air M1. It's the top-spec version with 16GB memory and the 8/8 CPU/GPU cores. I'm using the core library, some kitchen and bath manufacturer libraries and made a few custom materials and all seem to be working as planned. I even imported a cabinet maker's .calibz bundle and that's been seamless with structures, textures, countertops, etc.

To be fair, I'm still working with a small model of just 1 floor with a mezzanine and a few open-concept rooms, but wanted to report my findings since it's been tough getting a handle on whether the M1 chip is working or not. I love the machine and feel it's faster than the MBP 16" i9 I was also using to compare. 

I'm happy to try anything out if anyone has specific features to test, just let me know.

Thanks!

I figured the 8 core GPU, 16GB would do better.. 

Try downloading some add-ons to your library and see if it lags when Rosetta does the “translate on the fly”.  I’d be curious to know. 

 

[benriver]

Do you mean something else by "Add-ons" than these non-core libraries of items and textures that I've imported? The cabinets, appliances and fixtures are all from these extra, albeit free, library collections. (Was so happy to see Kohler doing it!)

 

[Chrisb222]

1 hour ago, benriver said:

I'm happy to try anything out if anyone has specific features to test, just let me know.

 

Thanks for the report. Does Home Designer have the PBR rendering technique? If so how does it handle that?

[HayleyM]

Hi All.

 

Benriver notified me that he posted on this forum about M1. I have had mine for about a week now, 16GB memory and 1TB SSD. Chief is running very well and I have Premier X12. It actually seems to be faster than my iMac at the office. My only issue so far is that the Physically Based camera does not work. 

On 2/21/2021 at 10:00 AM, benriver said:

It sounds like you were able to get 3D rendering while HayleyM in the other thread was not?

@benriver I am able to get 3D renderings work just fine. I can see all my work in 3D using the "Standard" camera view. I believe Home Designer does not have the "Physically Based" camera view that @Chrisb222 asked about above. This is what does not work for me. It would be awesome to know if someone else is having this issue that has a Pro and runs Premier X12. 

 

I also exported my extensive User Catalog library from my iMac and loaded it and opened on the MacBook with no problems. Had no problems importing and using Bonus or Manufacturer catalogs either. 

 

I will post some screenshots below that might provide some context. 

1. System Overview

2. Graphics processing report

3. What Chief Architect has to say about GPU

4. A kitchen plan, here you can also see how large my user library that imported perfectly from my iMac. Each folder has at least 10 items.  

5. 3D view of the kitchen in the "Standard" camera view (shown selected up at top right).

6. 3D view of the kitchen in the "Physically Based" camera view (show selected in top right).

 

 Overall, I'm very happy with it. If I need a Physically Based camera view, I'll just wait and create it on the iMac at the office. Happy to try anything that anyone wants to test as well.

 

[benriver]

Oh, I see now with a trial version download that Physical Based 3D views aren't really working. @HayleyM gets more output than I do! Thanks for pointing out the different rendering options that I didn't even know existed. Vector, technical, and glasshouse seem fine. Watercolor seems a little slow, but shows up... I like your idea of just hopping over to an Intel machine to do physical renders after putting it all together in the M1.

[HayleyM]

21 hours ago, benriver said:

Oh, I see now with a trial version download that Physical Based 3D views aren't really working. @HayleyM gets more output than I do! Thanks for pointing out the different rendering options that I didn't even know existed. Vector, technical, and glasshouse seem fine. Watercolor seems a little slow, but shows up... I like your idea of just hopping over to an Intel machine to do physical renders after putting it all together in the M1.

 

No problem @benriver! I almost exclusively present Physically Based views to my clients since that became an option. Don't know what I'd do without it! Really hoping that Chief can port everything to an ARM chip model soon so that I can use my new baby to its fullest capacity! 

[benriver]

Well, @HayleyM I ended up upgrading to HD Pro to get the physically based camera renders (that don't work on M1) and tried it out on a decently-spec'ed Intel i7 MacBook Pro 15". The renders are okay, but I wasn't blown out of the water by them. Totally a nice feature, don't get me wrong, but I found the software runs so much better faster on the M1 chip. Sure, it's apples-to-oranges since the MBP is older (2017 or so) but it was noticeable in the hour or two I spent tinkering on the Intel. Let's be sure to keep on CA about adding support for the new Apple chips - I don't want to go back!

[gioleung]

Hi HeyleyM,

 

Did you try the Ray Trace on M1? 
 

I’ll need to get a new Mac Book Pro soon and would like to buy the new M1 in stead of the intel Mac. what I read from you CA X12 running no problem with 3D standard but not the Physical Basic Rendering (PBR) on M1. I wonder is the X12 Ray Trace Running no problem or not?  I can do it with out the PBR if it still can Ray Trace with few nice pictures. 

 

My question is X12 Ray Trace working on Mac M1 or not?

[livwell]

I also have X12 installed on a mac mini M1, 16gb ram. Everything works well except for physically based rendering. Ray tracing seems also a bit off, images are darker than expected. Hoping for support soon!

[benriver]

Hi all,

I'm hoping to encourage Chief Architect to support* M1 chips going forward. If this is important for you, please consider adding your name to the petition and spread the word to your colleagues:

 

https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/chief-architect-on-apple-m1-chips

 

Thank you!

-ben

 

* At least Physically Base Rendering like the are planning for Intel chips

[gioleung]

On 3/2/2021 at 8:27 AM, livwell said:

I also have X12 installed on a mac mini M1, 16gb ram. Everything works well except for physically based rendering. Ray tracing seems also a bit off, images are darker than expected. Hoping for support soon!

Hi, thanks for your information. Hope CA will support M1 soon. 

[ldonaghy]

I have done some work digging into this subject.

 

The M1 was running CA 12 better than most of my Windows gaming computers.  I have one super LOUD gaming computer with an i9 and high end graphics card that barely outperforms the M1 Macs. I also have an intel based Mac that is way more expensive with a nice dedicated GPU, and the M1 blows it away.

 

So then we upgrade to CA 13.

 

It also runs super smooth and quiet, but with a few more (manageable) glitches.

 

If you contact CA support, they have been told by management that: “it doesn’t work well, it is just a phone processor, etc.”

 

Long story short, in reading the manuals, you will find that CA has a partnership with Intel.  So they are just avoiding the M1’s performance, and are refusing to support it.

 

Even with this, the M1 still kicks ass if you’re tech savvy enough.

 

And obviously I’m still using Chief, and love the software overall, but I do hope they cave into us Mac users soon and give some better support.

[scottharris]

4 hours ago, ldonaghy said:

Long story short, in reading the manuals, you will find that CA has a partnership with Intel. 

 

Chief Architect works with both Apple & Intel.

[scottharris]

Some background and information you may already know.  The Mac M1 is an integrated processor that contains the CPU & GPU.  Intel has similar integrated processors like the IRIS.  Typically, the integrated processors will not have the graphics performance of the machines that have both a dedicated CPU and GPU. Real-Time GPU raytracing is not supported on them (CPU raytracing is supported).  In addition, Chief Architect X13 does not currently support real-time GPU raytracing on the Mac because its graphics are not at the same level of the high-end graphic cards (NVIDIA / AMD).  I run Chief Architect on both the Mac & PC and seem to work equally as well, with the exception noted above:

 

2019 15” MacBook Pro 32GB, I9, AMD Pro 555X

2019 15” Lenovo Laptop 16GB, I7, NVIDIA 2060

[ghitchens]

Thanks, @scottharris and others at Chief Architect for a great product and for supporting the Mac!   Mac support is a primary reason I use Chief, since I use a Mac for other design and professional work as well.  

 

I wanted to provide a bit more detail on Apple Silicon and why I suspect Chief Architect has not yet supported it with a native arm64 (Apple Silicon) version to date.  For my credentials, I have spent my career in tech industry, have worked extensively on software tools,  and am very familiar with CPUs, GPUs, architectures, and the strengths and drawbacks of the Apple platform for various purposes (my current company does development work and Mac and PCs are some of our target devices).   If a member of the development staff at Chief Architect has more detailed information or a clarification on the issues below, that would be awesome, but since no explanation has yet been given, and no clear roadmap discussed, I have had to infer what might be happening based on my knowledge and experience.  

Regarding GPU performance, I don't think "integrated" vs "discrete" graphics paints an accurate picture of the tradeoffs involved when discussing the M1 and new M1 Pro/Max chips.   Overall, those chips deliver true "dedicated-gpu" class performance, and in most cases beat common dedicated GPUs found laptops non-specialized desktops.  It isn't fair to say that performance of these GPUs suffers because they are "integrated". 

 

• Apple's previous "integrated" M1 GPU (released last year in the Mini, Air, and 13" MacBook Pro) delivers GPU performance far beyond other (Intel, AMD) integrated GPUs, and generally matches the dedicated radeon 560 GPU in 3dmark performance.  @scottharris's macbook pro mentioned above, uses the Radeon 555x, which is lower spec than the 560, so it is likely my macbook air with M1 has higher GPU performance than his 15" laptop.   You can see some independent benchmarks here so that you know I'm not making this up: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested/3
• Apple just announced new MacBook Pro notebooks with the M1 Pro and M1 MAX, with up to 32 core "integrated" GPU.   Note that some people are estimating these GPUs to be competitive with the Nvidia RTX 2070/2080 series GPUs https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/10/19/m1-pro-and-m1-max-gpu-performance-versus-nvidia-and-amd.   This certainly implies that they are at or near the top of the charts of laptop GPU performance, even when compared with expensive dedicated "gaming" laptops.

 

Chief Architect is still built for amd64 (AMD/Intel) architecture only and must use Apple's Rosetta2 layer for translation, resulting in performance degradation compared to a "native" arm64 (Apple Silicon) build.  Regardless, I use it on an M1 MacBook Air with external 5k monitor, and performance is acceptable, although it is clearly suffering from lack of a native version.  It still is often reasonably competitive with my MacBook Pro Core i9 with dedicated Radeon Pro 5500 GPU, and without fan noise on the M1.

Given that the performance of Apple's latest Apple Silicon with "integrated" GPU likely is a strong reason for Chief Architect to support Apple Silicon natively, and that most Mac apps have already done so (it's just a recompile in Xcode for many apps), I think the question remains as to why a native version has not yet been released.    I have a couple suspicions, but the most likely one is this:
 

• Chief Architect uses Qt for a UI toolkit.  Qt did not support arm64 / Apple Silicon until Qt 6.2 released late September.  Given that the underlying UI library that Chief is built on didn't support Apple Silicon until now,  I expect that might be one of the things that has held up a native apple silicon version of Chief Architect so far.     https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-6.2-lts-released

Now that there is fully released Apple Silicon support in the underlying UI toolkit, and the kind of GPU performance in the new MacBook Pros that puts many "dedicated GPU" PCs to shame, I suspect (hope) that someone at Chief Architect is putting together a release of a native arm64 (Apple Silicon) version that takes full advantage of this amazing hardware.

 

Again, if someone at Chief Architect wants to comment on the roadmap, or explain where the above is wrong, it would be awesome.    Also, if you're looking for a tester for a pre-release version, I've got a few versions of the M1 (including the M1 Max 32 core arriving in a week or so) here to test on, and would love to contribute, since I have other configs here, including windows/RTX 3080 to compare to.

[Ryan-M]

I can’t provide a roadmap as that is not my role, but I can weigh in at least on the GPU-oriented parts of the discussion as that is my role at Chief.

 

I agree with @ghitchens’s statement that “integrated” vs. “discrete” is no longer an adequate way to describe these GPUs, particularly in the context of the newly announced hardware.  While it may be literally true (depending on how we define integrated, I guess), the integrated vs. discrete distinction connotes certain performance characteristics that no longer seem to apply in the case of modern Apple hardware.

 

Personally, I am excited to see Apple drastically improving their graphics performance.  Better hardware translates directly to a better experience for our users, not to mention us as developers.  However, it’s important to recognize that “performance” is not a monolithic quantity.  The most frequent question(s) we get from users regarding graphics and rendering on the Mac is when ray tracing will work and why it doesn’t right now.  Bear in mind that the frequency with which we hear this question is likely a factor in how Scott responded above.  In looking at the graphs Apple presented during their announcement it would appear that M1 Pro/Max GPUs are on par with fairly recent discrete GPUs, but the graphs don’t provide a lot of information as far as what was being benchmarked.  M1 GPUs do not provide hardware support for ray tracing.  Their rasterization and compute performance appears to be on-par with good discrete cards, which is fantastic, but the base M1 is 30-40x slower than entry-level RTX cards when it comes to ray tracing throughput and the Pro/Max improvements are unlikely to bridge that gap. DirectX combined with ray tracing hardware has given us the tools that make it comparatively simple to support real-time ray tracing and Metal/Mac hardware has not yet done so.  We will, of course, continue to evaluate whether or not we’re able to satisfy our performance requirements on new hardware as it becomes available (including the M1 Pro/Max).

 

Regarding compiling Chief for native arm64, @ghitchens's suspicion is accurate.  Chief leverages a large number of libraries that we need to be able to compile for arm64; Qt is one of these as they have pointed out, but it is far from the only one.  Some apps have likely been able to flip a switch in XCode and be in good shape to run natively on Apple Silicon, but this is very much not the case for Chief.  That said, it’s certainly something we are aware of and it is being actively evaluated.

 

As far as the overall question in this post, Chief does (to the best of my knowledge) work on M1 and I expect that the experience will only improve as the hardware gets better, as our support for the hardware gets better, and from a graphics perspective as we are able to iterate on our Metal implementation that was only introduced this version.