Not able to see clear graphics for my Mac OS High Sierra

[gudavant]

I am using Alias 2016 for my Macbook Pro. My configuration is:

Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.4 - 15 inch 2017 model

2.9 GHz Intel Core i7

16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3

Start up disk Mac HD

Intel HD Graphics 630 1536 MB

Alias has crashed 3-4 times in the past 2 months. I can see that two surfaces of the model of a pendrive have a gap between them but when I use the surface continuity command its shows G2 continuity. At times a part of the surface appears trimmed when it is actually not. Also when I zoom to see the point of intersection of some surfaces or curves, they disappear when I get close. I can see that the zebra / horver shader is not continuous or in 'broken steps' even though the shader is on the same surface.

I had tried to run Alias 2018 and 2017 on my Mac but they could not run due to some reasons. Perhaps my Intel 1.5 GB graphic card does not support them. I have run car exterior models on the 2016 and they work fine. Its just that the pendrive had holes when there are not any and the zebra shader shows "stepped" shading in some rare instances be it the car or a small model. I have installed SP1, SP2 and SP2 hotfix, tried the tessellator and accuracy too. But the result is the same. Also in spite of these solutions, the surfaces had edgy ends instead of smooth curvy end profiles. Like how a circle is made up of many segments on zooming for AutoCAD.

My friends in my class have windows laptops with 4GB NVIDIA cards. Alias 2017 works fine on them, they can see the model well including the zebra shader. It still crashes for them but rarely.

VRED has not yet crashed but it works a little slow during zooming. I have tried to see the list of certified hardware for Mac OS for Alias 2018 but there isn't any listed. What is the incompatible variable? Please advice. I want to run Alias 2018 on my Macbook Pro.

Regards,

[wayne.olive]

Hello,

Regarding using Alias 2018 on High Sierra, there is a long detailed post about the issues that can be found here: 

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/alias-forum/unable-to-open-alias-studio-2018-on-high-sierra/td-p/7442...

That said, long story short, the Apple High Sierra update caused several issues that we have worked diligently with Apple to get resolved.  The Alias 2018 Update 5 contains many fixes that may (or may not) solve your issue.  Please give it a try and let us know if it solves your issues. 

While we of course want our software to run on all platforms, we do not receive advanced access to Apple OS releases and thus we are unable to anticipate issues with those releases before the OS becomes publicly available.

[gudavant]

Thank you for your kind reply. I installed Alias Autostudio 2018 and then installed the 2018.5 update. I feel as of now it is working better than 2016 SP2 hotfix. The tolerance and tessellator issue has been minimized. As you can see after I used surface fillet for 2 surfaces with chord length 0.5 there is a gap between the fillet and one of the surfaces. But when I evaluate it for surface continuity by clicking the surface edge it shows G2 continuity. On clicking the fillet edge it shows a green dotted line. Please note that this happens even though the mulcol shader is on quality shader mode with minimum tolerance and accurate tessellation. Also when the "shader fast mode" is put on it shows there is a big hole in the fillet near the edge when actually there isn't any. 

The zebra shader has stepped shading for the same surface which I feel is absurd.

I have tried varying the fillet chord length but the result is the same that the fillet and surface lines don't match. This creates a problem for me to create other surfaces connected to these separated gap fillet surfaces. Then I get Tangent failed and Continuity failed whereas the other ends of the "Rail" pass Tangent continuity.

Do you think this is a problem because of my Intel HD Graphics 630 1536 MB graphics card? If you know of some compatible card can you please suggest which one can I use for 2018 Alias Autostudio Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.4 ?

[gudavant]

Alias 2018 still crashes when I zoom in for edit blend curve point. Basically, it crashes when I zoom in on details. It asked me to send an error report. For About This Mac it is showing that I have two graphics cards, 1. Radeon Pro 560 4096 MB   2. Intel HD Graphics 630 1536 MB. But it only showed for the time when Alias was running and crashed, otherwise, it does not show the Radeon card.

I have tried replacing the file AliasPrefs.scm posted by Bob55 on the other forum discussion for Alias 2018.5 update. I have tried to search in the discussion for a compatible graphics card but no one has specifically written it.

Alias Autostudio 2016 SP2 Hotfix1 runs okay even though I have other programs running, for example, Google Chrome. But 2016 still crashes and Alias 2018.5 crashes very often. If Alias Autostudio update 2018.5 is running on Mac OS High Sierra then I feel the compatibility problem is with my graphics card.

[gudavant]

I have sent my crash report of Alias 2018.5 update version to Autodesk around 2 weeks ago with report number CER_168569920. However, I have not received a reply. I contacted Apple support they said My AMD Radeon 560 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory should be fine for the graphics. The Intel 630 HD graphics card has automatic graphics switching mode with the Radeon card. 

I contacted NVIDIA and they said their cards officially do not support Mac. However, I found this link https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT202239 

Although he said that the link is old, it shows NVIDIA Quadro K5000 for Mac. But he (Apple support) said If I get a new graphics card my Mac will not support the new graphics card due to its logic board.

Apple support called me and told me to run the Alias 2018.5 update in safe mode but the software still crashed. They told me to contact Autodesk support as they are not able to resolve the issue and that the problem is with the software. This is the first time such an error notification came and that too when the safe mode was running.

I would say half of the time the software crashes during trim operations when I have zoomed into the details of the Alias file. My professor who has around 8 years of experience as a modeller says there is a graphics problem with my laptop. I can say that my laptop shows low-resolution surface treatments than other Windows laptops even though the same file is opened.