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Mac V's Windows


Sonia TSA

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Looking for new computer advice. I have the opportunity to purchase a new computer for work. I've looked at the VW spec. recommendations. My main conflict is Mac v Windows. I've not really used Mac before (other than phones and iPads). A friend recommends Windows for more bang for buck, and more versatility for upgrades. My boss is a big Mac user, but is open to best options. I currently use a lot of image textures and bitmaps in my Landscape plans, and while I haven't done a lot in 3D yet, we'd like to get something that is capable of processing high qualities renders when we are ready to take that step.

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Haha! Yeah, I get it's a bit of an unspoken divide with a lot of personal choice! To be clear - my co-workers don't use VW, only me. So it's more about what will be best to run and stay update with VW for me. With no Mac experience, would be good to get feedback from Mac users on any user or upgrade issues they may have faced 🙂

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38 minutes ago, Sonia TSA said:

Haha! Yeah, I get it's a bit of an unspoken divide with a lot of personal choice! To be clear - my co-workers don't use VW, only me. So it's more about what will be best to run and stay update with VW for me. With no Mac experience, would be good to get feedback from Mac users on any user or upgrade issues they may have faced 🙂

I hear that bang-for-buck-wise, everyone I have spoken with has said their new M1 machines, esp 32 GB & 64 GB models are crushing it with VWX (aside from the apps issues of course). I haven't heard from folks running Vision or Landmark.

But all that's anecdotal. Plenty of specs out there to be found as well.

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I'm a long time Mac desktop user, and there aren't good M1 options available for VW.  I'm waiting for upgraded M1 Mac Mini or 27" iMac options. When the time comes, I'll probably choose an iMac because I've gotten used to the incredible screen quality.  It sounds like the latest MacBook Pro laptops have plenty of power for my purposes, so I expect the next release of desktops will as well.

 

The big downside of the Mac ecosystem is the very limited ability to upgrade a machine after purchase.  Instead, plan on buying as powerful a computer as you can afford and use it for a long time.  The good news is that they're pretty reliable and Apple is pretty good about offering OS updates for older machines.  

Edited by E|FA
typo
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@Sonia TSA I spent 20 years doing the PC & AutoCAD thing before committing to a Mac & Vectorworks.  I switched over in 2016 and haven’t looked back.  There is an adjustment period with both, but it’s not the hardship people moan about.

 

I got an iPad Pro and iPhone first.  Once I switched my computer to a Mac too, it seemed my work got a lot easier.  The thing that kept me on the Mac was the beautiful screens, stability, high quality physical and digital aesthetics.

 

hope it helps.

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The Mac seems a bit easier to maintain than the PC, but there's no huge difference. Either one is less geeky than Linux, but vwx does not run on Linux anyway (I was going to set up a Linux rendering machine to take the rendering load off the PC or Mac in TwinMotion since TM does work in Linux).

 

Macs seem to work better on the network (LAN) - we're still having problems with the Windows Machine, no idea why. Mac-Linux-NAS all work fine, and WIN-NAS works fine. Just not Win - Mac - Linux -  NAS

If you plan on doing rendering on your main machine (TwinMotion...) make sure you get a good graphics card. Our PC (Win 11) isn't quite there, but our 5K iMac (Intel/Nvidia) works well enough. Vwx runs fine on an M1 MacBook - but I haven't tried TwinMotion on the MacBook under Rosetta.

 

Also, not sure but it seems like Mac Metal rendering is faster in VWX than rendering in Windows (RenderWorks, OpenGL?).

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14 hours ago, bcd said:

Another consideration is rendering, in case you get into 3d

If you need to run Lumion (or Enscape) it's Windows only. You can run Twinmotion on Mac.

 

There's good news on the Enscape front, it's coming to the Mac in 2022: enscape3d.com/enscape-for-mac/ and they have merged with Chaos. An interesting side note to the merger, Sean Flaherty, former CEO of Vectorworks, will become Chairman of the Chaos Board.   

 

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You can run twinmotion on mac but it looks like they regard windows users as higher priority - recent releases of TM have had features available to PC users but not mac users, who it seems have to wait in line before those things are made available.

 

I'm a fairly long time mac user and I plan to stay that way rather than going through the pain of changing ... but if PC is what you are used to I'm not sure really how much you gain by switching to mac.

 

The thing that mainly concerns me about being a mac user is the limited choice in applications outside of VW - and rendering applications are one of the areas where this is a bit of an issue, especially now that it looks like the way things are going, people are going to be moving to using "real-time" rendering applications like Twinmotion as standard, instead of doing it within VW in Renderworks.

 

As far as I can understand, a lot of the "heavyweight" 3d world has moved from Mac to PC in the past 10 or so years and this affects the choice and types of software available on the platform. I'm not sure to what extent it's true to say that this is partly because Apple seemed to shift its emphasis away from the type of user who'd previously have had a Mac Pro (which used to be quite customisable and upgradable).

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2/10/2022 at 3:39 AM, line-weight said:

You can run twinmotion on mac but it looks like they regard windows users as higher priority - recent releases of TM have had features available to PC users but not mac users, who it seems have to wait in line before those things are made available.

I don't think it's a case of prioritizing windows users, macs don't support hardware based raytracing which is what twinmotions pathtracer requires. Enscape utilizes raytracing and Nvidia's DLSS for AI based upsampling. So with apple not willing to play ball with raytracing hardware and other advances by more open entities rendering is going to streak ahead on windows machines.

Edited by Aspect_Design
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