Apple Mac Laptops for VW2024 Landmark

[Heidi]

Hi 

Looking for some advice please.  I am needing to purchase a new laptop.  I would like to move from a windows based laptop to an Apple laptop.  Please could anyone give me some feedback on the differences between working on the Pro or Air Mac laptops, if you have used both.  I am working in Landmark.  

Thanks

[Pat Stanford]

We need additional information on how you work.  Are you mostly doing planting plans? Or are you doing substantial amounts of site modeling?

 

Do you just need output of construction documents? Or do you need to do photorealistic renderings on large image sizes?

 

The above and anything else you intend to do may impact the recommendation.

 

The short answer is get the machine with the most RAM you can afford.  Some people are getting by with 8 or 16 GB, but 32, 64, 96, or 128 will certainly give you more options.

 

I upgraded last year to the 16" MBPro with 128 gig because I was working with a huge model and that was the only thing that could handle it. But I often have 20 different programs running and it "Never" hiccups.

 

Sorry for the "It Depends" answer, but It Depends. 😉

 

HTH

[Heidi]

Hi Pat

 

I work with a mixture of concept and planting plans for residential, rural and commerical.  My commercial projects are large files but these are mostly in 2d not 3d.  I am starting to do 3d visuals in some of my projects and would like to do this more going forward.  Would a 16GB hack it for this type of work or should I be looking at a 32GB?

 

Thanks for your help

[Pat Stanford]

It kind of depends on how long you intend to keep the machine.

 

16 GB will probably get you through 18-24 months.  32 GB would likely last longer, say 36-60 months before you need an upgrade.

 

I have always had a theory that you should either buy the mid-range machine and upgrade every 18 month or the top of the line and upgrade every 36-48 month.  For Macs. Don't know for Windows.

[Heidi]

Great thanks for the advice Pat.  

 

I will go with the 16GB for now and then look at upgrading down the line when feeling a bit more flush 🙂  

[mjm]

I'm just gonna add in that I regret not getting the 64GB MBP. If one is rendering esp if rendering a scene with multiple lighting sources, it tends to be big RAM consumption, such that it may complete the task, but I'll have had to shut down every other open app - web browser, email app, every Adobe app, etc.

I have occasionally experienced ram spikes up to 149 GB on this 32GB machine, at least in VWX 2023, so…

[E|FA]

I have a 24GB M2 MacBook Air.  I do very little rendering (mostly in Shaded & Hidden Line modes), as most of my output is construction drawings of single family residential projects.  I have to make sure I don't have many tabs open in Safari to avoid memory issues, and at most I only keep my Calendar, Messages, PDF, and Mail apps running.  I can get my work done efficiently with this setup.  Given the cost differential to the MBP I'm happy with my decision, but having extra memory would have been nice.

[Jeff Prince]

22 hours ago, Heidi said:

when feeling a bit more flush

When that time comes, get something top tier.  You won’t regret it.

 

I bought a near maxed out MacBook Pro in 2015 and just retired it simply because I didn’t need a laptop and thought someone else could get good use out of it for a few more years.  It still did everything fine, including twin motion animations.  in terms of operating cost, it was only $350 a year for its service life!
 

As a landscape architect, I appreciate having a fast computer to deal with the complicated 2d graphic of plants and hatches along with the highly complex 3rd party plant models I like to use in my renderings.

 

Nothing worse than working on a slow computer.  Oddly, I have not seen large improvements in VWX graphic speed since they overhauled the VGM back in 2019?  The latest hardware is good, but not earth shattering good as we were led to believe by some software vendors.

[Peter Neufeld.]

Hello,

If you plug in an external monitor like the System Requirements page says, you need to consider more Unified Memory. A 16" MBP screen at 3456 x 2234 = 7,720,704 pixels.

Plug in an external 4K monitor at 4096 x 2160 and it will add 8,847,360 pixels.

 

That's 16,568,064 pixels in total.

 

Also, 2D geometry can be more demanding than 3D because of things like transparencies, image and tile fills, drop shadows, hatches and so forth. Having said that I have come across users with several external monitors and only 16GB UM and are happy.

 

Cheers,

Peter