Raytraced Mode on Apple

Rhino Mac Hardware
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1

Hello!
I’m teaching Rhino 7 on Macs at University. Raytraced mode has no reaction when selected…
Can anybody advise on hardware requirements and software configuration to make raytraced mode work?
Are there any other installation/network limitations that may be causing an issue?
Thanks

2

If it is on an Intel Mac with AMD GPU then that is probably the cause. You could set the render device to CPU in Rhino 7 > Settings > Cycles and restart Rhino, see if that works.

3

Thanks. I need to relay this info to the IT team at the University. Do you have any other setup recommendations that would help for them to know?

4

The IT team doesn’t have to do anything, users can change this in Rhino 7 themselves.

But on machines where Raytraced doesn’t work you could run the Rhino command _SystemInfo and post the results here.

5

Great thanks

6

Was just wondering why are you teaching R7 on Mac…?
The UI is so different in R7 Mac from current [and future] versions.

7

Good question… The university is running 7. They need to upgrade…

8

Hi @nathanletwory

This is the machine spec:
M1 iMacs which have Apple based GPUs. On my test iMac these are listed as “Apple Built-in GPU with 8 cores and support for the Metal 3 graphics”.

Would this be suitable for raytraced mode?

9

They should work, but we see Metal driver crashes more frequently on M1 architecture than on newer. I have an M2 Max and it works fine.

If you run into crashes with Raytraced and Rhino Render you can still set Rhino Render to use CPU (Rhino 8 > Settings > Rhino Render, switch to CPU tab and make sure CPU is checked). This setting is used also for Raytraced.

10

Thanks @nathanletwory
I’ll give it a whirl.