Rhino 6 Mac Performance Issues in 2d drawing

Just because I bumped into this several times now, while creating some plans:
Even merely selecting a lot of curves (around 10-100k) takes very long. For one drawing with around 50k curves I waited something like 5-10 minutes just to select it. Nothing else, just selecting all curves…

Hopefully this can be solved, since it seems to have worked better in V5.

All the best,

Rudi

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The developer is aware of this issue.
I don’t have the YouTrack item at my fingertips but he has it.

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Sounds great - thanks a lot for your work!
Wishing you guys much success!

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guys any updates on this issue?

I am just working on stadium seats (simple rectangles), but every operation takes forever… it is basically impossible to finish my work on Rhino Mac since it takes 5-10x longer than it should.

Cheers

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I switched to Rhino 7 mac wip. But the performance doesn’t seem to improve.

2d drawing performance still not faster, + all the layouts disappeard (they are still there but empty)

Btw: Why is zooming with the magic mouse “wheel” so fast in 7 wip? Where can I make it slower?

There is something else which is really annoying.

Sometimes I work on a file which is saved on the server, which sometimes loses connection. When that happens I cannot save the file on the desktop, I cannot close Rhino. The only thing I can do is force quit Rhino and restart the computer to reestablish server connection.

BUT In that case I lose all my work, because even if I saved the Rhino files thousands of times with cmd+s while working during the server connection was still established, Rhino for some reason reverts all and I lose everything. Why???

In Rhino 5 mac no problem. In case the server loses connection I just save the opened file on the desktop, restart the computer and then replace the file on the server. Easy. In Rhino 6+7 wip that does not work :((((

Yeah, hopefully there is some solution on the way…

@OXII, maybe it would be better to post these issues in separate threads, or search for them on the forum - we should focus this threaD to Curve Drawing Performance issues :pray:t4:

this is serious issue for me right now. Basic 2d work maxing out the CPU on a maxed out macbook pro with Rhino 6.

Really want to make the switch from cad to rhino for 2d but with these kind of performance issues its currently illogical.

Please, any progress on this?

Cheers,
G

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Dear “Gssprey”, we switched to Rhino 7 mac Beta. The performance is better on our machines (mac mini & macbook pro). Still not completely satisfied with the 2d performance, but it gets better from build to build.

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What graphics card are you folks using on your macs?

Not to be the killjoy here, but I have a lot of complete models and (until they get really big) I have not seen performance problems on Rhino for Mac; even on my 10-year-old Mac Book Pro that I had to retire last year when I could not get the keyboard repaired. I have always maxed out my memory and gotten the best graphics card available (and I get the lowest processor available to save the money).

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I am using an Graphics Intel Iris (1536 MB) on a mac mini bought in 2016 (spec is 2014 I think) and an AMD Radeon Pro 450 OpenGL 2GB with a Macbook Pro early 2017 spec.

Do you have a lot of 2d data as well (imported dwg, 2d technical drawings, layouts)?

The iris is way below min spec and even the radeon is below min spec… We’d like to see 4gb of vram min… and 8gb of system ram… Those number have some “ish” on the mac side but are a decent guideline to start from.

The intel iris machines should not be supported at all in my personal opinion (disclaimer: not an official mcneel recommendation) because their performance is just not good enough to use in a pro setting…

if you are doing pro work… buy a pro machine.

and I’m sure I’ll get flamed for saying this (cue comments like: I have an iris machine and it’s GREAT!!)

However, on tech, I have lost track of how many cases I’ve seen relating to Intel UHD, Intel hd and Intel Iris machines and their frustrating performance and graphics hassles. Those machines are expensive for what you get and people get mad when they don’t work well…

My best advice is: spend a little more and get a machine that won’t make you want to throw it across the room every time you use it.

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You get flamed for saying this.

The mac mini was top spec when we bought it (4 years ago). The macbook pro did cost more than 3000 euros 3 years ago. That is no entry level hardware.

Lifespan of professional hardware has to be 6-8 years when used in an office (I am not talking about one person but an office), otherwise it makes no economical sense to buy macs. This has to be taken in consideration when developing new software.

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If it has intel iris graphics, it may be top spec, but not a pro spec machine for modeling, despite the cost.

To be clear, Money spent does not a pro machine make.

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On Blender 2.9 (Modeling and Rendering) this machine is amazing, considering it’s specs. As it is for Adobe/Affinity and AutoCAD. So I do not get why in 2d drawing in Rhino 6/7 it is a desaster. As well as my Macbook Pro. Although 7 beta is already way better than 6.

And I am not talking about modeling skyscrapers, but normal 2d and 3d work of interiors and small architecture.

A lot of this has to do with the OpenGL drivers on Mac. Drawing curves in any GPU accelerated technology is actually very GPU intensive work and we saw a huge performance improvement on Windows when we implemented a certain technique for drawing curves in OpenGL. Unfortunately, Apple’s drivers never worked very well with this OpenGL feature and I don’t think that will change. Our only realistic option on Mac is to reimplement our display code on top of Metal. This is a very big project and is something we are working on for V8.

We’ll keep making performance improvements in our current display for V7 when we find situations with models that users share that we find can be optimized.

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I’ve struggled with 2d geometry in V6 & V7 beta, once you get a lot of lines/curves/hatches its not good 🤷😩

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Thank you Steve for explaining. Being transparent about the issues helps us users to understand why we face some frustrations.

Do you consider the recently presented mac minis an improvement? They have now the new M1 processor without any specific graphic processor or an Intel Processor with Intel UHD Graphics 630. Apples politics on gpu’s is frustrating, because they reserve high gpu memory only for their most expensive hardware, and even there it is not thrilling. But 95% of all mac users cannot and will not pay that much for hardware.

7 beta broght already improvements in performance on the same mac machines. So the direction is the right one. Thanks a lot and keep up the good work!

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It is frustrating for me too. We were told to update to use the latest version of OpenGL which was a massive rewrite and gamble because you never know if the architecture is going to perform as well as the older system unitl you have put a lot of effort in. We are able to achieve visual effects that we weren’t able to achieve using the older OpenGL versions and we did see large performance gains on Windows. Unfortunately the performance for specific tasks like drawing curves on Mac did not improve with the new architecture. We are going to have to take this gamble again with metal.

The hardware is just fine on many of these Macs for display; it’s the OpenGL drivers that are lacking. If you run bootcamp on many of these machines, the display will be much faster for drawing curves. We aren’t doing anything special on each platform, it is the driver that just happens to work better. Apple has made it pretty clear that they want their apps to use metal and I suspect that is the only place where they put real effort into their drivers.

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“We are going to have to take this gamble again with metal.” Yes, I think too that this is the only sensible way in the mid-term.

It did really help us a lot that you explained why we face these problems. We know now that we need to be patient and it is not about buying faster hardware tomorrow. Rhino is an excellent software and we will continue to support you guys.

Under these circumstances your improvements over the last few months on 7 beta have been substantial, even on the mac mini with Intel Iris we have seen improvements.

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