LDD on Macbook Air and/or Macbook Pro

[Bainreese]

Hi all,

I'm considering picking up a new laptop. I know LDD works great on my (4 year old) desktop Mac. But for those of you who use the Macbook Air or Pro, how is the performance for you? I'm unsure it will even work on the Macbook Air. But figured there had to be someone who attempted it.

Thank in advance for your thoughts!

Edited February 14, 2012 by Bainreese

[DLuders]

From this LDD.lego.com webpage, the download link to LDD 4.2 for Mac OSX says:

""Minimum system requirements for Mac:

Operating system: OS X 10.5.8 or higher

CPU: Intel processor

Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 5200/ATI Radeon 7500 or better RAM: 1 GB

Hard disk space: 1 GB"

From this "MacBook Air vs. MacBook Pro" comparison, it appears that BOTH of them could run Lego Digital Designer. Click on the hyperlinks in that comparison article to find this info:

11-INCH MACBOOK AIR:

Processor: 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-2467M

Memory: 2GB, 1,333MHz DDR3

Hard drive: 64GB SSD

Graphics: Intel HD 3000

Operating system: OS X 10.7 Lion

13-INCH APPLE MACBOOK PRO:

Processor: 2.3GHz Intel Core i5

Memory: 4GB, 1,333MHz DDR3 RAM

Hard drive: 320GB 5,400rpm

Chipset: Intel H67

Graphics: Intel HD 3000

Operating system OS X 10.6.6 Snow Leopard

Edited February 15, 2012 by DLuders

[Brickdoctor]

By the numbers, it should work, as DLuders says. As far as experience is concerned, LDD runs perfectly fine on my late 2010 MacBook Pro. (Snow Leopard, 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB of 1067 MHz DDR3, NVIDIA GeForce 320M with 256 MB of VRAM) It starts to slow down around the 4,000-piece mark, though.

[gherkin]

I use a white MacBook, which works fine for me less specs than the ones quoted above

[vynsane]

Runs fantastically on my 17" MBP (Early 2011) 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7 with 4GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6750M (1024 MB VRAM) in 10.7/Lion. I work with brick outlines on, high-quality rendering of bricks in scene, and don't experience any real slow-down. You should be good to go with any MacBook model.

[Bainreese]

Thanks for the feedback Mac users! While I appreciate Dluders' info, anyone worth their salt can read the specs. But actual performance can vary even on systems that are supposed to run it just fine. So hearing the good words from others helps to reassure me.

Thank you everyone!

[vynsane]

Just as a caveat, I tried to open Alienwar's MAWLR (just the MAWLR, not the entire scene) and LDD crashed on me. It's probably because of the high-quality rendering/outlines, and possibly because I was trying to do so on an external 24" monitor, which seems to make it respond slower.

[Brickdoctor]

On that note, I always use the high-quality rendering and brick outlines, and those are the conditions under which it starts to slow down at around four thousand pieces. I've never actually tried using LDD without all the high-quality graphics options turned on. (when I work with models larger than five thousand pieces, I usually hide whatever I'm not working on, and that speeds things up considerably)

[zinfinion]

Anything over a few thousand pieces seems to crash for me at random when loading. Sometimes it will, sometimes it wont. And this is on a i5-2500k desktop with 2 Nvidia GTX 460s in SLI. It could also be because I am forcing FXAA antialiasing though. Or the SLI. The joys of computing.

My only concern with the Macbook models listed is how well the Intel graphics hardware compares to either ATI or Nvidia. But I don't know nearly enough to actually comment on that.

[Darkdragon]

I use LDD on my Macbook Pro without any issues. I had a 2007 (2GB ram) model and the recent update to LDD was making it work very slowly (1-2 seconds to load each brick preview image, random beach balling, etc), but my new machine runs LDD like a champ (4GB ram).

[RoxYourBlox]

I have had a similarly positive experience as brickdoctor and vynsane. My macbook pro has 8GB RAM and a solid state HD. It achieves smooth rotation of models up to 4000 pieces (with outlines on), and the case runs cool to warm. The only downside I've experienced with this over a PC or other macbook is a half second delay when selecting a new piece.

[Bainreese]

Well I picked up a Macbook 13". It has the Intel HD3000 graphics and it seems to work pretty well so far. I tend to just work in LDD to test out some ideas on certain aspecs of certain models, not usually building the entire model there. So I think I'll be fine. I'm really glad all of you weighed in though as it really helped to give me a better idea of how it was working for everyone.

[Zeya]

I have the latest 13" Macbook Air (released in Spring 2011). It's able to handle LDD just fine. You shouldn't have any problems. Feel free to PM me if you want me to test anything in particular for you.

A Mac Pro is definitely able to run LDD like butter.

P.S. I love my Macbook Air. I had concerns at first that it wouldn't be powerful enough and such. But I'm able to do anything and everything, and it's great how thing and light it is.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Zeya

[Calabar]

The question shouldn't be if a mac pro or mac air is enough good to run and work on LDD, but if the Graphic Card mounted on that is. Obviously che CPU can influence the performance, but the GPU is more important.

The HD 3000 is good enough to run LDD (that is not certainly an heavy software for a powerful machine), but certainly performances on notebook with a powerful graphic card is much better.