There have been lots of questions in this thread about when 64-bit support for the Mac version of ArchiCAD will be available and why it is lagging behind compared to the Windows version.

ArchiCAD is a “Carbon” application – as the majority of the Macintosh applications with 8+ years history. We already started the work of making ArchiCAD 64-bit compliant in “Carbon” when Apple had a sudden decision in 2007 to drop the 64 support in “Carbon” and provide it just in their “Cocoa” framework.

As we consider 64-bit a strategic feature we started to rewrite the Mac specific parts of ArchiCAD from scratch for “Cocoa” to provide this functionality to our Macintosh users at the earliest possible timeframe. We are working on it with significant resources, but it is an extremely huge development effort that spans over multiple versions.

The first result will come in the next major release (ArchiCAD 14) where the BIM Server that is designed to host and serve numerous large projects will be 64-bit compliant on the Mac as well. Fortunately according to our best knowledge the vast majority of our Mac users do not stretch the current 4 Gb memory limit yet.

I would like to emphasize that GRAPHISOFT has always been in the forefront implementing the latest Apple technologies (e.g. most recently the Mac-Intel transition). We always do what it takes to serve our Mac users equally well and our 100% commitment to the Mac is stronger than ever.

Thanks for the info Laszlo. Leverage Cocoa to fix the Mac GUI in v14 too and you can count us in.

Kudos Laszlo for posting this information.

owen wrote:
wow .. where the hell did that come from?

OK this is the first time I have ever said this to anyone on these forums:

You obviously have no f'ing idea what you are talking about.

I thought you were just enthusiastic but you really gave the game away when you started spouting this pile of crap regarding Karl. Not once have i seen him blowing his own trumpet and he certainly didn't in this thread.

We have never met in person but Karl is one of the most well respected ArchiCAD users there is. He is always constructive, thoughtful and courteous (unless someone has really rubbed him up the wrong way). He is involved far higher up the Graphisoft development tree then you or I will ever be and he sure as hell knows what he is talking about.

You say you aren't interested in comparing CV's yet you criticize his choice of practice and begin talking a big game about square feet and blah blah blah. Let me tell you don't want to go down that path - there are guys on here who have completed projects totalling multi-billions in their career and i think all of them would still think of Karl as one of the real guru's of this program.

I will give you one thing, you certainly know how to make an entrance ...

I missed what was said by the manic guy, but I would like to say Owen has caught my sentiments too. I did meet Karl in person at ACUWest and he has changed how we all think about and use archicad.

Laszlo, many thanks for keeping us informed on Mac development. Most appreciated.

Laszlo,

Good to hear from you on this topic. It is encouraging to know you guys obviously understand how important this is* .. although not looking so encouraging for AC14 as i had hoped. I completely understand that when developing a cross platform application doing the Mac side in Carbon was more attractive**. I still stand by my earlier comments though on 'what if' .. hindsight is always easy though.

Your team should be commended on TW2 - it makes me want to go back to a big office just to really put it through its paces.

Keep up the good work!

cheers,

owen


* Yes this means i will shut up about it for now .. can't promise until the next version but i will try.
** simple explanations like this

Jeffrey wrote:
Out of curiosity has GS considered harnessing the power of Xgrid? From what little I've read about TW2 it seems to be a logical companion. I have yet to see anyone here even mention any attempts at using it.

Maybe elaborate?

I don't think that there are any tasks that ArchiCAD does that are data intensive enough for distributed computing today, other than rendering - and there is already a network render module for LightWorks, but GS does not license it.

To the extent that code has to be analyzed and rewritten for xgrid or multithreading (any kind of workload sharing), personally, I think adding additional multithreading to ArchiCAD would be the most productive thing that benefits the most users since multi-core processors are the norm now, and higher processor and core counts are the future.

Cheers,
Karl