ArchiCAD on M1 Macs

[il_teo77]

Simple question:

- Does anyone use ArchiCAD on M1 Macs?

If so. Does it work flawlessly (under Rosetta 2) or are there problems? Is it fast (especially in complex BIM projects) or does it slow down to a crawl?


Thank you very much for any answer.

I am thinking of upgrading my MBP mid 2014 and ArchiCAD is mission critical. Although I know it is not AppleSilicon native, I wonder how it performs with AppleSilicon under Rosetta2.

 

[JohnnyGo]

Have you tried contacting Archicad developers?

 

[Spindel]

Sorry I only use AutoCAD under rosetta on an M1 (which works with no problems that I've noticed so far)

 

[il_teo77]

Have you tried contacting Archicad developers?

I was more interested in the user experiences than what developers "say". I'll try nevertheless. Thanks a lot. I though maybe here there would be more chance to get user experience feedback.

 

[il_teo77]

Sorry I only use AutoCAD under rosetta on an M1 (which works with no problems that I've noticed so far)

Thank you, but since the programs are from different developers I think it is safe to say that it doesn't provide a comparable feedback (also, we use BIM quite extensively, which is the reason for my question since it already taxes Intel Macs quite a bit)

 

[pmiles]

From ArchiCAD's own forums dated Nov 24th:

I would like to clarify one key detail here: the Apple Transition Kit was equipped with an Apple A12Z Bionic, which is the same chip found in the 2020 iPad Pro (which is not a big difference compared to the A12X on 2018 iPad Pro). This is not the same as the M1 chip found in the latest Macbooks and Mac Mini. At the same time, macOS Big Sur was still in an early development state back then, therefore the integration between software and hardware was not optimized.

Currently, we are thoroughly testing the M1 chip to see how Archicad works on the new chip with Rosetta 2. There will be an article about the compatibility roadmap for Apple ARM very soon, followed by another article with detailed performance review of the M1 chip later this year.

 

[TRV]

I got a m1 MBP 8gb running ArchiCad 24, its running smoother than my 2019 MBP i5 8gb. 3D and generating sections and elevations are much faster. We work on medium sized housing projects.
Next week we receive an m1 Mac mini 16gb. I will let you know what the noticeable difference in ArchiCad is with 16gb and 8gb.

 

[deconstruct60]

Simple question:

- Does anyone use ArchiCAD on M1 Macs?

If so. Does it work flawlessly (under Rosetta 2) or are there problems? Is it fast (especially in complex BIM projects) or does it slow down to a crawl?

https://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/knowledgebase/130674/

Applications that make a heavy number of calls into the Apple library calls for OpenGL and Metal seem to generally highly optimized during the Rosetta recompile to Apple Silicon. The higher percentage time spebt in Apple good the smaller the impact appears to be in general .

the subset of ArchiCAD workloads that leverage a scripting language component probably would have biggest negative impact . ( if have to dynamically invoke the Rosetta compiler in the middle of a running application there is a big hit on performance ).

 

[DaveOZ]

I have ArchiCAD SE 2020 running on my MBAir M1 8/512. It boots and loads projects faster than my maxed out MBPro16. Rotating 3D views is incredibly smooth. I have not had time to test everything but so far it's great. I do not intend to use this as my main machine for Cad work but it's nice to know it works. I am looking forward to the next generation on 16" MacBooks.

 

[ikramerica]

Graphisoft now has a helpdesk article about the M1. Good information on how it compares to Intel Macs of the last few generations, to give an idea of whether you should replace older machines now and with what.

The only major issue they found was ArchiCAD doesn’t quit properly in Rosetta 2.