Apple macOS 14 Sonoma Compatibility - Feedback

[JuanP]

This article will be kept up to date with any details about the compatibility between Vectorworks and macOS 14 Sonoma:

 

Please share any feedback with us about the new macOS Sonoma and any version of Vectorworks.

[zoomer]

So far I haven't noticed any issues with VW 2023.

But there is a similar post on the German Forum and so far

they found 2 problems.

 

- collapsed palettes do not always open automatically

- EPS images appear empty or pixelated and won't be printed

 

 

Sonoma Beta in general,

I have temporarily issues from time to time everywhere.

A restart helped.

But nothing I could really reproduce.

[matteoluigi]

@zoomer which really useful benefits does macOS Sonoma bring in your opinion?

[zoomer]

4 hours ago, matteoluigi said:

which really useful benefits does macOS Sonoma bring in your opinion?

 

Ohm, nothing (?)

 

had to go to Sonoma Preview Site to read what's in there ....

 

Maybe,

the PDF improvements or better spellchecking or so ?

 

Honestly I did not think of new features when I upgraded.

I am just used to upgrade everything ...

And I usually have less problems with Betas and SP 0s than with final releases.

 

But it has a larger number and larger numbers are better.

And it is newer so it must be better.

[zoomer]

What I notice in general in early Sonoma Betas is that Activity Monitor

often shows quite some usage although I do not much.

It may be a M1 thing.

 

First, I see WindowServer task quite often on top of the list using quite

resources.

AFAIK Window Server is the bridge between Apps and the Monitor output.

There is not much happening in my active Window, like browsing the VW

Forum. But I am not sure how some other Safari Windows or other Apps

in background could cause these spikes in Activity Monitor.

I tried to switch some on and off but could not really find who is responsible

for that load or not.

 

Second, the same thing for kernel_task

AFAIK something to prevent overheating in CPU (?) cores. So if an App

does do strange things and heats parts of cores extensively, Kernel Task

comes in and takes over some resources with fake load to save and

cool them down.

But no clue if many of Apps behave that way, at least in Sonoma,

or Sonoma would run better on M2 machines than M1 or Sonoma

has its own problems.

Usually at least one of 8 CPU cores has always a base load of

50-70% here.

 

But overall kernel-task is only half as active as WindowServer.

 

 

But have to add that I did not look much at Activity Manager and

especially for these tasks before Sonoma.

I started doing so just because I sometimes experience some lags

and also sometimes seeing Activity Manager Icon in Dock showing

high activity although there should not be much work to do.

 

(And as it is not mdworker Spotlight indexing craziness and such

as it usually was in the past)

Edited August 15, 2023 by zoomer

[tdiamond]

Be sure to check compatibility with your device drivers (such as printers), as these are often what cause app crashes in the early releases of macOS.

[FBernardo]

I've just installed Sonoma on my machine and will be testing, is there anything priority to test?

 

I'm using an M1 Pro MacBook 16"

[Sky]

On 9/28/2023 at 6:21 PM, tdiamond said:

Be sure to check compatibility with your device drivers (such as printers), as these are often what cause app crashes in the early releases of macOS.

 

I upgraded to Sonoma on my M1 MacBook Pro and didn't see any problem. Then I did it on my M2 Mac Studio, and Quickbooks Desktop for Mac 2021 didn't work (even though it worked on the MacBook Pro). OMG - I had to erase my Mac Studio and reinstall Ventura which was an overnight process. As far as Vectorworks goes, I actually haven't encountered any issued with Sonoma. 

[tdiamond]

4 hours ago, Sky said:

As far as Vectorworks goes, I actually haven't encountered any issued with Sonoma. 

Good to know.

 

Sorry to hear about your other dramas!

[cantdrawgood]

Problem with zooming. Sonoma on a 2023 M2 Max Studio. Using VIEWER 2023. Zooming is really lagging. Same drawing on an M2 MacBook Air with Ventura 13.4.1 zoom works as expected.

Here's the really weird part. I tried to take a screen cap video of the problem, but whenever I try to record the zoom works great... 

[B Cox]

Why is support for Big Sur blocked? It essentially means anyone with a 6 year old computer cannot use Vectorworks. I was trying to do some remote work this morning on my secondary computer and realized that its impossible. Tons of intel mac hardware is still out there.

[rDesign]

2 hours ago, B Cox said:

Why is support for Big Sur blocked? It essentially means anyone with a 6 year old computer cannot use Vectorworks. I was trying to do some remote work this morning on my secondary computer and realized that its impossible. Tons of intel mac hardware is still out there.

I have an Intel MacBook Pro from 2016, so about 7 years old now; I am running macOS Monterey 12.7 and I can run the current Vw 2024 release without issue.

Edited October 14, 2023 by rDesign

[Pat Stanford]

I believe that it is an Apple issue. Apple has changed the operating system so that many tasks, especially graphics tasks, can't be performed the same way on newer and older operating systems. 

 

This is also the same reason that older versions of VW will run on Windows than on the current version of Mac OS.

[Ben Miura]

On 10/7/2023 at 2:14 AM, cantdrawgood said:

Problem with zooming. Sonoma on a 2023 M2 Max Studio. Using VIEWER 2023. Zooming is really lagging. Same drawing on an M2 MacBook Air with Ventura 13.4.1 zoom works as expected.

Here's the really weird part. I tried to take a screen cap video of the problem, but whenever I try to record the zoom works great... 

Are you still having this issue? I'm wondering if I make the move to Sonoma

 

[FBernardo]

I'm using Sonoma, but i haven't found this zoom issue you found, could you tell me how to replicate it?

[Graeme Wood]

On 10/2/2023 at 11:05 AM, FBernardo said:

I've just installed Sonoma on my machine and will be testing, is there anything priority to test?

 

I'm using an M1 Pro MacBook 16"

How are you finding Sonoma? I'm using VWX 2024 on the same machine and looking to update to Sonoma.

[Pat Stanford]

After 1 day on an M3 MacBook Pro, VW and Sonoma seem to be getting along just fine.  There have been a few people with small complaints, but those are likely to go away when the next service pack is released later this month.

[dtheory]

M1 Mac Studio. Not run into any major issues, there have been a couple of graphic glitches that resolve by restarting VW.

Edited November 9, 2023 by dtheory

[FBernardo]

17 hours ago, Pat Stanford said:

After 1 day on an M3 MacBook Pro, VW and Sonoma seem to be getting along just fine.  There have been a few people with small complaints, but those are likely to go away when the next service pack is released later this month.

Pat have you tried to use any Twinmotion/Enscape features like path tracer and so on, to use those newly RT Cores?

[Pat Stanford]

No, I have not tried Twinmotion or Enscape. And I really don't have a plan to do so as they are really not part of my workflow.  Sorry.

[FBernardo]

18 hours ago, Pat Stanford said:

No, I have not tried Twinmotion or Enscape. And I really don't have a plan to do so as they are really not part of my workflow.  Sorry.

 

Did you had an M1 or M2 Macbook pro to compare the performance within them ?

[Steve Kennedy]

I seem to be having an issue with lags and hang ups notably while selecting objects with a bounding box. When I run the Activity Monitor I notice that WindowServer will spike to 95% of CPU capacity while using Vectorworks even in simple ways. I only encountered this problem the other day when I installed the Sonoma OS. It was fine on Ventura. Since then I have reinstalled both the system and Vectorworks with no improvements in this problem.

 

Has anyone else been experiencing this issue? It makes VWX almost unusable on my machine and I am contemplating the idea of downgrading my Mac back to Ventura which seems like a daunting process.

 

MacBook Pro

M1 Max

64Gb Memory

[JuanP]

@Steve Kennedy What version of Vectorworks are you running? 

[Steve Kennedy]

2024 Update 1.1 (Build 728734)

[StefanoT]

With VW24 Update 1 and 1.1 on macOS Sonoma (latest) we’re experiencing incremental crashes not related to specific commands till it becomes very unstable (>2 crashes per hour).

 

Running “Repair” from the installer does not seem to solve the issue. Clean reinstall does solve it, at least for a while. This was a recurrent behavior on 2 different users/devices  (MacBookPro Intel and MacMini M2), starting from a few crashes and quickly in a few days becoming very unstable.

 

We have already shared this issue with our local distributor, and we got answered Sonoma is not officially supported yet, but we still believe - as VW addicted 😉 - it is worthy to share here. 

Edited November 24, 2023 by StefanoT