Mark Aceto

Migration Manager? You're brave...

Thinking about what other keys I want to add along the lines of viewing / navigating, possibly losing the system keyboard keys (arrows, home, end, etc.). Projection - Ortho Projection - Narrow Render - Wireframe Render - Shaded Clip Cube Working Plane stuff...

BTW this is only scratching the surface of the Stream Deck. There can be multiple layers for VW, other apps, and a rabbit hole of other controls... so even though I love a good numpad / macropod... they're starting to seem like a starting point. The other thing I love about that is instead of going in for invasive surgery to replace lots of stock shortcuts, I can leave as much stock as possible, and then just add this catchall device for everything else. Much less muscle memory...

It worked! The cool thing about this is not just for Standard Views--Mac users have a whole other modifier key available: the CTRL key! That means CTRL+(any key) on a Mac is available (because CTRL is analogous to CMD on Windows, so it's reserved for that). The caveat here is that if you use both Mac and Windows, this will probably hose you if use the same workspace stored in a Workgroup Library. Anyway, instead of this quagmire: I have this: BTW if you add the shortcuts in macOS Sys Prefs, not only will they not replace the shortcuts in the Workspace Editor (somehow fully functional yet non-destructive), they'll appear in the View Bar dropdown and in the Menu Commands (pretty sure I bet someone tacos that it would do this but I can't remember whom, and even if I did they've probably spent hours if not days mentoring me, so it's "a wash"): And then after disabling Show Title: Here's the result IRL (now I just need to find or create better icons for those red keys):

Super rough first pass WIP update on the Stream Deck XL... First of all, high res Standard Views icons attached here, so nobody else will ever have to suffer the pain of fishing for them: My goal is to never take my hand off the mouse to press these keys on the Stream Deck. I plan to experiment with the best layout of the standard views. In the past, I've lined up all of the lower views in a row on a numpad, and that worked pretty well (easy to cycle through them). This is also why I wish there was a Stream Deck that was 5 rows instead of 4. That said, the Stream Deck can be rotated 90 and 270 (depending on where you want the rake and USB cable path), so it can either be a grid of 4x8 or 8x4. I may experiment with that too because it's a space hog with fat bezels. Also note that the glossy keys reflect light like little mirrors making the keys unreadable when laying flat (if lit from above). So you either have to have a backlit keyboard with shine-through keycaps, or put the Stream Deck in an awkward angled position where you poke it in the ribs vs touch type. Also, after going down the rabbit hole of custom keyboards, the Stream Deck keys feel slippery, mushy and easy to accidentally press adjacent keys. The device is purely utilitarian. I initially thought I was gonna test this Amazon purchase and return it if I didn't like it but I think it's gonna be more of a keep it and experiment with it journey (like a 3Dconnexion Space Mouse but with less despair). In the screenshot of the Stream Deck software, I left the "Titles" on the keys to show that shortcuts are not needed for the views mapped bound to the numpad. I'll have to re-add the lower views because they were lost. I'm gonna try new simpler logical shortcuts using the CTRL key because I'm on a Mac (godspeed). Note: it's shocking how many shortcut key combos (not just hotkeys) are already used by VW, leaving only the weirdest illogical gymnastic combinations for gold medalists in the Carpal Tunnel Olympics. I'll turn off the titles (Numpad 1 and so on) after I assign shortcuts to the lower views. The red key legends came from a pack that I downloaded for a few bucks but you can make your own (even animated GIF's): Everything in Its Wrong Place: Space Hogs: Keychron Q0 Plus compared to Idobao Montex: REDRUM:

Tim Apple (in his best Don Draper voice): That's what the M2 is for!

What was the VW task in that screenshot? BTW there are som other column options in Activity Monitor that might be useful:

I think I got threads mixed up because there's a Venn diagram of the same handful of people complaining about the same handful of things in a handful of slightly differently places. Just spend your life savings on a Mac, and everything will work great. It's like we're all sitting around the monolith at The Dawn of Mac: (And we know what happened to HAL's memory.) Moving on...

Well, that's a lie:

Doubling the low end from 16 to 32 would make a big difference. Adding 16 to the high end would not be noticeable for most users, myself included. I feel like a broken record but: Look at the Intel MBP in my signature: 32 + 8 (40 total; not 32) So 32 is really more like 24 + 8 if we're comparing ARM's to Intels I've never run out of memory with 128gb, and I'm usually sitting somewhere between 25 and 50% (32 to 64gb) If 32gb shared memory is in one's budget, it's a no-brainer for 2023 and beyond. If a power user is concerned about running out of memory, and has the budget, I can vouch for the Studio not disappointing. I complain a lot. I've never complained about running out of memory.

That's fair but I think you had some good news about VW 2023 memory management vs VW 2022.

A lot of contextual relativity to unpack here... First of all, I've never run out of memory with 128gb, so yes, more memory helps. If @Christiaanor @zenowould like to share one of their mega drawing sets with hundreds of section viewports, I'd be happy to test if I could peg this machine. It's defeatist to say more memory won't help but there is a diminishing ROI at some threshold for every user. BTW their feedback directly helped the memory management improvements in VW 2023. That said, a lot of the initial feedback was regarding VW 2021 and 2022. Keep in mind, the M1 Mini was released over two years ago at the end of 2020 (shortly after VW 2021 was released). And VW 2021 ran in Rosetta 2, so VW 2022 was the first version that ran natively on ARM, so of course it wasn't as optimized as it is now (or will continue to be in the future). Whenever Apple change architecture, we all go all along for the ride (growing pains). 140 to 190gb on a 64gb machine? Those are some Activity Monitor funny numbers... If I could summarize everything: VW 2023 is more efficient with shared memory than VW 2022 M2 Mac Mini offers double the shared memory (from 16gb to 32gb) of the M1 Mac Mini M2 single core is ~20% faster M2 Pro is the fastest single core Mac right now M2 multicore is ~20% faster (has 20% more cores) M2 Pro is the 4th fastest multicore Mac right now *** M2 graphics are ~30% improved In other words, the user experience of running VW 2023 on a maxed out M2 Mini should be noticably better than running VW 2021 or 2022 on a maxed out M2 Mini. *** For the heavy RW users, these are the Cinebench scores: 75,671 AMD Threadripper 3990X 41,012 Intel i9 13900K 21,740 Apple M1 Ultra (M2 Pro is presumably 2/3 the M1 Ultra) So, it seems Apple have painted themselves into another corner with ARM.

What really grates my gears is that Apple doesn’t offer a 48gb or 64gb shared memory upgrade option for the M2 Mini because they want to force users into a Studio or MBP. For context, the 5-year old Intel Mini offered up to 64gb RAM + 1.5gb VRAM (65.5gb total) and was eGPU compatible. But, you know, then they’d sell a lot less Studios and MBP’s… I’ll use a Mac as my daily driver until the bitter end but post-Jobs Apple is pure greed and subscription “services.”

Not leaking / holding onto as much memory. Not aware of any RAM improvements here in VW (RW is typically a CPU bottleneck and barely touches the GPU / VRAM). I wish more RAM or VRAM would solve this problem. Sadly, this has never been a hardware bottleneck. They’re interested in finding a solution though. @Christiaan you wanna take this one? I can summarize my experience. Once I hit a certain threshold, memory was no longer the bottleneck. Today on M2, that would be about 32gb (shared). At the moment, on M1 Ultra 128gb, I have more memory than I’ve ever needed. It’s never been pegged (aside from UE/TM). I’m regularly hovering in the 25-50% range with a few exceptions, so that would be 32-64gb (shared). That’s a roundabout way of saying the sweet spot for shared memory on ARM is 32-64gb (for me). Less than 32gb (shared), and I’d be hating life. More than 64gb (shared), there’s not much of a return. Over 96gb (shared), I don’t even notice it. Btw I think Apple improved thermal cooling in the M2 Mini, right? That would be another benefit compared to the M1.

I'm not going to pretend to know how 90% of VW users use VW. Nor am I going to define or label who is or isn't a power user. However, as someone who's been using a Mac since at least 1987 (Mac SE) with the exception of 1999–2003, here's what I objectively know from experience, and professionally recommended to my friends and colleagues here in the forum: Single core performance - From top to bottom, this is a level playing field, so it's not even a consideration. The cheapest M2 machine is faster than the most expensive M1 machine (and the $50,000 Intel Mac Pro because it's a stupid Xeon instead of a 13900) and always will be. This will not be the bottleneck. Multicore performance - Beyond 12 cores will mostly be utilized by Renderworks (the Cinema engine will use every core you throw at it). However, most everything else in VW on either a design or sheet layer won't really benefit from more than 12 cores. This is another no-brainer for most users; don't waste your money here. This will not be the bottleneck. GPU - GPU's are the new CPU's. However, in the context of the Mac Mini, it's not a factor. You'll get what you'll get, and you'll like it. This will not be the bottleneck. Shared Memory (RAM + VRAM) - Let's start with the painful truth: even though a Mini is a desktop, it cannot be upgraded. Therefore, you want to get more than you think you'll need a few years from now. Give yourself some headroom for having an Adobe app open at the same time as VW. If you're backing into a budget, this is the upgrade choice in 2023 that will determine everything else. This could be the bottleneck, so the recommendation is 32gb. Storage - Desktops, laptops, iPads, iPhones... this is where Apple really stick it to their customers, it also cannot be upgraded, and we're always filling it up. Cloud storage and external hard drives can certainly help with savings here. Thermals - Fortunately, this is no longer the bottleneck in 2023 but it's worth mentioning after everything we suffered through during Sir Jony Ive's thin and light reign. There's a very good reason the new MacBook Pro's are thiccer than a sticker. As computers get bigger and badder hardware, developers' apps become more resource hungry. Everything is relative. Developers are still optimizing for ARM. When I hop on my 2019 and even 2014 MBP, they just feel like rock solid machines. They were the most refined iterations of their generations (RIP Nvidia GPU's and drivers). We don't draw in a vacuum. We have other apps open. Some of them, like the free Twinmotion with an Easy-Bake Oven interface that a toddler could master, require a minimum of 38gb combined memory (76gb is recommended) Some of those that cut corners are the same that complain loudest... about the way things "should be" "All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again." See you all when the M3 is announced...