Macbook Pro 13in (new) and onshape

coleman

Just purchased a new macbook pro 13in with that fancy touchbar across the top (eh).  
Unfortunately it does not play well with onshape.  I spoke with the support team, they were very helpful.  
The issue is with the graphic card.  If you plan to buy a new macbook pro and want to use onshape....do NOT buy the 13in.....buy the 15in.
The 15 has a graphics card that will work with onshape....the 13....not so much.  Grrrrrrrr

EDIT:  Had I known about this limitation I would have not purchased the 13in macbook pro

Evan

Onshape will benefit from a discrete graphics card, which the new 13" Macbook Pro does not have, unfortunately.  One thing you may want to try is disabling the "Pixel matching" for that device.  Newer Macbook Pros have retina displays, and Onshape will render at retina resolution by default.  Shading all those pixels takes time, especially on integrated chips.  You can override this in your user preferences:


Though this will reduce the resolution of the final image, it may well improve your performance.

billy2

Was looking at it seriously to buy before years end. 3lbs right?

Should work, can you please goto https://threejs.org/ and see if webgl is working? Might not be OS.

Just looked up 15" macbook pro which comes with a AMD Radeon


15" is 4lbs, not sure I'd want that extra pound. We use to test video performance and found that a speed increase of 10x could be discernable by the user. I'm not sure you'd see this difference unless you ran some code to tell you the difference.

My 12" mac is using a crappy older intel chip and it's ok. The newer intel chips are about 10x faster which would be good to have. I'd try and get the 13" to run.

Goto an apple store and log into onshape, you can see performance before you buy or switch. Goto the genius bar and have them fix it. It should run.

I'd send it back to apple and make them fix it. Tell them you want an nvidea chip set and none of this other crap.

Thanks for posting, I'm now very cautious.

coleman

@evan
I think "onshape will benefit from a discrete graphics card" is a bit of an understatement.  It's virtually unusable on the new MacBook Pro with an integrated graphics card.  
Thats like saying an automobile will benefit from having tires.  They may not be 100% required but damn it's a bumpy ride without them.  

The CAD anywhere on any device message is getting a little thin.  

I just never would have imagined that onshape wouldn't work on the latest MacBook Pro!  

I love onshape and I am very bummed out about this.  

Would it it help if onshape developed its own browser?

Evan

To be sure, many Onshape users do run Onshape successfully on integrated cards.  They perform well on models of moderate complexity on displays with non-retina DPIs.  However, performance will drag as more data is thrown at them.

If your performance is unusable right out of the gate, it's possible there is something problematic the Intel Graphics 550 GPU, or the drivers Apple is shipping for it.

billy2

No, there's enough browsers.

It's apples problem, make them fix it. Make sure webgl is working. Don't use safari, get chrome.

The internet is based on standards and apple has to obey. I think you'll have similar issues with other programs on your new computer. 

Someone at OS has to have bought a new macbook. This will be solved.

coleman

@billy2

I am using chrome, webgl working fine. 
Onshape simply won't run properly on a 13in MacBook Pro.  

I spoke with onshape support on the phone and this was confirmed.  

billy2

good to know,I'll stick with my poky 12" macbook (2lbs) for now.

Thanks for posting

coleman

If you are in the perspective view and then click on the RIGHT view on the cube....it take abouts 10 seconds for the model to rotate to the right view.  Very slow and jerky....especially when creating features.  

All of this would be solved buy the 15in mackbook pro....however Im not sure I want to lug around a 15in notebook.

billy2

My 12" macbook with retina display and a crappy intel GPU, it's good enough:



AMD has never been able to process polygons, they specialize in vectors. nvidea are the guys who spin polygons and you don't have that option with the new apple laptops. 

I really don't think the 15" is worth it. 

If you're bouncing against slow rotates & zooms, you probably need to manage your data better. No CAD/computer can handle the data set that 6 engineers can produce in 6 months. You have to manage the data. I don't buy the fact that you need a faster GPU. I'd like one, nvidea not AMD! Apple doesn't have that option which means their latest laptop aren't perfect. But there's nothing out there that's better.

I was looking at lenovo's thinkpad super duper laptop. 7 lbs. no way am I carrying around a 7 lbs laptop. Then I'd have to wipe the hard drive and load ubuntu, virtualize it and buy another copy of windows because microsoft won't let you re-install win10. Chromebooks just don't cost enough, I can't work on a $200 computer.

Get your 13" working, somethings wrong. Turn something off. Turn something on.

Do you like the new touch bar? Some one told me it's for selecting emoji's which I'm not interested .

coleman

@billy2

The touch bar is growing on me for the basic system stuff like volume and screen brightness, video playback controls etc.  Im with you on the emoji's. 

The touch ID scanner is the best feature on the touch bar IMO.  

I dont know what else to do on the 13".  I literally spoke on the telephone today with support.  

I can run onshape on a computer that is 7 years old and everything is better than the new 13". 
Onshape on my 2012 air is 100x faster 

I adjusted the settings as Evan suggested but the model got fuzzy and blurry looking....especially juxtaposed to everything around the model on the screen that is not downgraded.  

coleman

Even scrolling in the feature tree is slow and choppy.  Especially in an assembly.

coleman

@Evan

To be sure, many Onshape users do run Onshape successfully on integrated cards.  They perform well on models of moderate complexity on displays with non-retina DPIs.  However, performance will drag as more data is thrown at them.

Its more than performance drag....unusable.  

CAD anywhere, anytime on any device (EXCEPT THE NEW MACBOOK PRO 13") 

This is seriously almost false advertising the more I think about it.  I am very disappointed because this was a KNOWN issue but onshape never notified us. 

3dcad

@coleman
How does it perform with https://cad.onshape.com/check ?

I have few months old 14" Thinkpad X1 Yoga and I'm pretty happy with it - even though it doesn't perform very good on that test. And screen resolution is too much for current software as zooming makes things weird..

Have you tried how things go in fish tank http://www.fishgl.com/ ?
Thinkpad was ok for 250 fishes with 33fps but after that fps drops signifigantly..

ps. I agree with you that Ons guys should go into apple & other computer stores and make reviews on how Onshape performs on new models of 'famous' computers like Macbook, Thinkpad, etc..

billy2

Some things wrong, obviously, that should be a great computer.

Has apple issued an update?

Graphics are tightly coupled to the hardware and makes the drivers really important. Even though apple doesn't have the driver hell that windows does, it still requires them. 

I'd poke around apple and log an issue. Tell them webgl isn't working correctly with onshape. webgl is complex and there's many modes, some things not right. Not sure it's an onshape thing.

I want to buy a 13" macbook pro, so I'd like to see it work.

coleman

@3dcad
  
400 fishes with 41fps.  

coleman

@billy2
Onshape support confirmed- onshape does not work properly with the new macbook pro 13" (integrated Iris graphic chip).  

Before you buy I highly recommend you test it out with onshape first. 

Tested in fusion- works great
Tested in project leopard- works great 
Onshape- fail

Obviously I am disappointed because I want to use onshape.  I am faced with returning this computer and exchanging it for a 15" macbook pro....which I do not want to carry around. 

phil_dawson

I also get choppy performance on the (just replaced) rMBP 13" 2.7Ghz i5, 8GB Ram, Iris 6100 GPU.

What is interesting is that Solidworks runs better on a £200 laptop than OnShape does on this.
My work office computer with an integrated HD5000 runs fine.

If I turn off the match pixel density on the profile settings, it does run fine at the lower resolution.  But this makes no sense, as it runs fine my 13" iPad Pro that has pretty much the same resolution as the rMBP 13"

coleman

@phil_dawson

I turned off match pixel density too but the lower resolution is a pain in the behind to look at on the retina display.....especially juxtaposed to other elements on the screen that are not lower resolution.  

The model just looks fuzzy.  

coleman

@phil_dawson
I have always gotten better performance from the iPad I app compared to the browser version.  

billy2

Went to the Apple store last night and looked at new 13" & 15" Macbook Pros. Fired up Onshape and loaded a huge model on each.

-13" Macbook Pro worked fine
-15" Macbook Pro worked fine

Maybe the demo models have been updated, but they showed no signs having issues running Onshape. I was running safari. The 15" graphics was noticeably faster handling (rotate & zoom) with large files. With medium files, the graphics advantage was moot. I liked the touch bar.

Going back to see which fits best in my backpack and wondering if I can lift 3lbs/4lbs.

coleman

I went to the mac store and had my computer replaced (exchanged for a new one) with identical hardware.  

I still experienced poor onshape performance.  

I then exchanged the 13" for a 15".  It ships in 2-3 weeks.  

billy2

The 15" macbook pro is a nice computer. I was really interested in it also.

I went to the apple store on the last day of the year trying to decide if I wanted the upgrade.


I didn't go for it. Turns out my dinky little 12" was working pretty good. One of the apple geniuses told me my little computer was only a souped up ipad and I needed an i7 processor. Graphics was better on 15" and the extra memory was good, but I wasn't memory bound on my little computer and the graphics on the 12" is fine. 

coleman

I finally got my new 15" macbook pro in the mail today.  Onshape works great on it! 
I guess the 13" just doesn't have enough ass in the graphics card to work well with onshape.  

The 15" however is good to go! 

3dcad

How does it perform with https://cad.onshape.com/check ?

coleman

billy2

It's a smoke'r, make sure your seat belt's fastened while operating!

coleman

I will admit that I still have performance lag when working with a complex assembly.....

billy2

Can you take a snap shot of your assembly and post it?  I'm interested to see what it looks like.

You may have to break the problem into sizable chunks. 

owen_sparks

coleman said:

That's interesting.

In the "Performance Check" part of the page the graduated scale is all the way to the right for "Full on awesome sauce performance" but the triangles per second is one of the lowest scores we've seen...  Huh? The lines per second is back to awesome.  Is this ATI vs Nvidia?

Owen S.

3dcad

Maybe we need to run twin-graphics for optimum performance - lines with ATI and triangles with Nvidia