Is Rhino 7 usable with M1 Macs?

Rhino Rhino for Mac
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I mean what does “unsupported” imply? Completely non-functional or works mostly with a few issues or something in between? I’ve looked at the known issues, but as I’m not a current user of Rhino I can’t tell how much of a deal-breaker they are.

The context is that my daughter’s current Mac is dying and is looking for a replacement. She is doing an Architecture degree and will be starting using Rhino either this semester or next, but we’d like to know how broken it is on the new Macs as we could get a refurbished intel Mac instead of an M1 Mac if it unusable. However, for longevity’s sake and performance in all other applications we’d rather get an M1.

Long story short, could a beginner get on OK with Rhino for a few months while the M1 issues get fixed for longer term use?

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Mostly completely non-functional as far as I have been able to glean from the discussions here. Do a search and you will find them.

No, they will not likely get fixed ‘in the next few months’ - if at all for Rhino V7.

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@ithinkiam check these for further discussion:

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Thanks. yes, I’ve seen those, but they don’t say what the experience of running Rhino via Rosetta is actually like. There’s talk of crashes and being “NOT SUPPORTED”, but how bad is it really? That’s why I’d like to know from people who’ve tried it.

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That’s not what they’ve said.

Rosetta doesn’t work with Rhino, yet. Many of the issues are OpenGL related, and may be OpenGL driver issues. We will file driver issues with Apple as we get more information. Problems we can fix, we will fix in Rhino 7.

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Hi -

At this point in time, it crashes when using a non-wireframe viewport. I understand that you don’t use Rhino, so, simply said, at this point it always crashes.

We are trying to work around those OpenGL display issues in Rhino 7, and, now that a first WIP of Rhino 8 has been released, users can start experimenting with using a Metal-based display engine instead of OpenGL on Macs. At this point, everything is guessing but you should expect that feature to be experimental for the next several months at least.

All in all, at this point in time, if you are looking for a machine to use for work that is important to you, we can only advise opting for an Intel based machine. If you don’t need to decide today, you should check the status at the time that you need to decide.
-wim

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Many thanks for the reply, @wim! That’s exactly the type of answer I was looking for. Now we can make a decision.

Good luck to the team on the development.

p.s. where can we get the Rhino 8 WIP to experiment?

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Hi -

You need to own a Rhino 7 license - the WIP can be downloaded from here:

-wim

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Thanks! :+1:

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my chin just dropped to the floor, drooling out a few pints. are there any “preliminary” hardware requirements you have set?

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You need a machine that is capable of running macOS Catalina or newer - Rhino 8 won’t run on previous OS’s.
Going to :apple: > About This Mac > System Report… > Hardware > Graphics/Displays > GPU … there should be a Metal section that says something like Metal GPU Family macOS 1 supported.
-wim

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Only just now I opened the WIP, on a 2013 MBP [so pretty old] spinning a 1.4mil mesh the display is very responsive [almost smooth] while in V7 the same mesh is almost impossible to move and spin around…
Looks like a really nice start for V8 WIP

Corrections: @stevebaer explained that it’s not the Metal what I’m seeing with the mesh and it should be the same in the latest V7.2.
Akash

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That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. We don’t have metal enabled by default so you should be using the same OpenGL code as V7 uses.

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Thanks Steve

I only opened the WIP and tried moving around that mesh that yesterday was making me suffer on V7.

maybe it has to do with other optimisations?

with best regards
Akash

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If you aren’t on 7.2, I would recommend installing that. Any other optimizations would be going into 7 as well.

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Thanks, just installed now the latest 7.2 and Yes that same mesh runs much better now.

Akash

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IMHO, Apple has screwed the pooch here. I worked a a computer company that insisted that executables linked on V1.0 would run on any subsequent OS version—but those days are long gone.

My suggestion for Ithinkiam is to look for a used machine on the refurbished market to hold your daughter over until the Apple chaos subsides. I have an olde Mac that needs replacing but I’m holding off until things settle. I don’t want to be an OS tester.

I would be leery of getting an M1 machine at this stage anyway. It appears to me as an outside observer that Apple has not worked out how large memory systems (like those needed for Rhino) will be laid out architecturally and how graphic acceleration will finally function.

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I am an architecture student with the M1 MacBook and I was wondering if the experimental version 8 of rhino is useable on my Mac. I’m not using mesh’s or anything but I do often use the rendered and shaded view options. Will the experimental version work for me in your opinion?
Thanks!

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i would be interested either, but was not bold enough to buy an m1 yet, (by the way it always reminds me of bmw’ M1 Version of their cars)

my guess is that Metal which is now under development and is available in the WIP 8 Version could maybe make it work… just a wild guess and you would have to activate Metal with the command TestMetal as described here

dont kill me if it does not help anything :slight_smile:

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@lianabrown10
No.
Metal is the name of the graphics language Apple is moving to.
This has nothing to do with rendering materials whatsoever.
This thread is about Apple’s new Silicon M1 processor Macs that are not supported by Rhino.
Sorry for the confusion.

1 Like