Any Mac Beta testers out there?

[En Fuego Mark]

I've recently decided to get out of the AutoCAD family and switch over to CA. I work a lot remotely, so Ill be running it via lap top. I know the Mac version of CA will be out early next year. My question is, do I wait and roll with it on a Mac or pull the trigger and go with a PC it now. I guess more specifically, does the high end Mac Book Pro handle the new X6 Mac version? Im know there are some Mac beta testers out there, just curious of their feedback, especially of they are on a Mac Book. I am Apple on everything else, so Id prefer to go Apple, but only if it "works".

Thanks in advance!

[Dave Pitman]

You won't get any beta tester comments as that is forbidden by CA. You may get a comment from one of the Company guys.

[johnnyprc]

If you are in residential and using AutoCAD, you will be very pleased with Chief Architect. You really have no idea how much it will change your business.

I've gotten into charging fees for interior design as part of my process, since Chief probably does interior design better than ANY other architectural software out there.

[Levis]

I've been running Chief on my MacBook for a while now (via Bootcamp), and I find it so,so for running Chief. What I can tell you right now is that if you plan on doing a lot of raytrace renderings, go for a desktop MAC instead (that's what I'm saving my coins for )... I did a few really detailed large raytraces this summer and the logic board on my MacBook crapped out shortly after (2 months after my warranty expired to boot). The MacBook is fine for the smaller renderings and the construction doc's, etc. I'm speculating here...maybe Doug or one of the other guys at Chief can chime in, but I think the MAC version will use the computer's resources a bit differently when running in the native OS, so hopefully it runs a bit better/quicker.

Regardless of MAC or PC though, the best bet is to get the best possible hardware you can afford. If you haven't bought your MacBook yet, I would recommend you build it with the best of the 3 processors/graphics cards they give you the choice of, at least 16GB of RAM, and an SSD hard drive.

Speaking of MAC Beta testers though... if you guys at Chief are listening... I would be interested in possibly helping out with the next round!

[mgabriel]

I, too, run CA on a Macbook Pro with Bootcamp. It does have some quirks, but I deal with it. All in all, it runs pretty well though. CA, if your listening, I would love to be a Mac beta tester:-)

[SusanC]

I also run CA on a MacBook Pro 15" with Bootcamp and it runs just fine. Very stable. The 15" has a dedicated graphics card in addition to the shared graphics card, which is very important.
I am also very interested to hear how the Mac version is coming along as the rest of the team of 5 that I work with are all interested in switching over to a Mac version.

[Levis]

... and I find it so,so for running Chief.

I should clarify. The program runs fine and is very stable, as SusanC said. Whenever I get a crash, it's usually a Windows problem and not Chief itself. The main gripes I have right now is how slow the line rendering option is as compared to my previous PC laptop (I quit using that option for now). Also, as with many laptops, if you are working on a plan with a few 3D views open, the MacBook itself gets really hot in no time. If you are actually working on your lap... not very comfortable!

That's why I say, if you're going to be doing a lot of renderings, regardless of MAC or PC, get a desktop that has the hardware that can handle that workload. I thought everything was going fine on my MacBook until I had to shell out $700 to replace the logic board because you can't replace just the graphics card on those MacBooks

[Doug Park]

Our official position with regard to Mac hardware is that Chief will run on anything that Apple is currently shipping, including the Mac Minis and Mac Book Airs. I'm running Chief on a Mac Book Air and while I wouldn't recommend it as a primary machine it is surprisingly fast for such a small device.

Mac Book Pros from at least a couple of years ago should be good options. Of course newer and faster is always better.

What we have found is that for most things given equivalent Mac and Windows hardware you should see very similar performance. In a few cases, such as support for Embedding PDFs the Mac wins by a long shot in performance. We are also seeing very similar issues with video cards. Usually if there is a driver problem on Windows Mac has the same problem. We have worked hard to support all the Mac video hardware and are close to doing so.

Current Mac hardware is mostly ATI or Intel for video so we are working hard to make sure those cards work well on both Mac and Windows.

Stability wise I think X6 on the Mac when we ship should be very comparable or better than X5 on Windows. As far as learning goes, you should be able to pull the trigger on the Windows version now, learn how to use it and be able to quickly move to the Mac version.

We are also going to support Mountain Lion and Mavericks as OS versions for sure. Lion is a bit iffy but at the moment we are still running on it. We won't support Snow Leopard or earlier.

[scottharris]

The beta program should expand in late October. If you are a Mac user and are interested, send an email request to beta@chief....

[gteacher]

For those of us who have both types of machines and would like to make comparisons in order to determine the best platform for Chief.

Will we be permitted, at least in the Beta, to install Chief on both machines and make a "side by side" comparison?

[Doug Park]

Certainly. In fact the way we are currently planning on shipping the product the platform you run on will be your decision. If you want to switch back and forth between Mac and Windows you will be able to do so more or less the same way as you can switch machines in X5.

Files are binary compatible between machines so it is easy to move them between Mac and Windows.

[johnnyprc]

Certainly. In fact the way we are currently planning on shipping the product the platform you run on will be your decision. If you want to switch back and forth between Mac and Windows you will be able to do so more or less the same way as you can switch machines in X5.

Files are binary compatible between machines so it is easy to move them between Mac and Windows.

Very good to know - thanks.

[jcaffee]

Doug, please answer Gerry's question about benchmarking. Gerry, with a couple notable exceptions, every software Beta test I've participated in since 1992 (about 30) has allowed private benchmarking but precludes publishing any results. CA staff will need to clarify for you.

jon

[Doug Park]

Our performance goals for X6 are to meet or exceed X5. In many cases X6 is faster, but there are still a few cases where we are still working to exceed the X5 speed. My expectation is that when we are done there will be a small number of cases where performance is slightly slower than X6.

Comparing Mac and Windows performance is slightly tricky because the hardware is often just different enough that you can't really do a perfect comparison. However, for nearly similar hardware it appears that Mac performance will more or less match Windows performance in the majority of cases. I am aware of cases where Mac is significantly faster, for example displaying PDFs. Since compilation of the program on the Mac is using a different compiler the optimizations will be different. The compiler on the Mac is really good and appears to be consistently producing code that executes on par with what we see on Windows.

As far as code stability goes, at the moment Windows holds a slight edge over the Mac version, but that is fairly minor. Most of the time if we find a problem it is occurring on both platforms. The cases of differences will hopefully be mostly resolved before we go to our public beta. We will continue to fix any new issues that pop up that are platform specific as we discover them.

Bottom line is that it appears to be a tossup on whether Mac or Windows is faster, so it really boils down to which one you prefer.

[scottharris]

You can find information on the Chief Architect Mac software (version X6) here: Chief Architect X6 product information