kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Andy Peters <devel@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Oct 9, 2014, at 12:03 PM, Ian Woloschin <ian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Easiest way to tell is using gfxCardStatus, https://gfx.io/, which will tell you what's running.  You can also, sort of, lock it to integrated or discrete.  I did a quick test and KiCad ran fine when locked to the integrated card, so I think this should work, which will be very nice if you're running on batteries.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to get an Info.plist that works, so I don't have it working by default.  I tried modifying the Info.plist that's in the kicad.app bundle, but that did not seem to work.  Realistically, this is a *very* minor issue, but if we're polishing the OS X builds this is probably something that should at least be on a list of things to have working for a true "stable" release.

OK, I installed gfxCardStatus on my 17" Late 2011 MBP (like I said, the last of the line ...). It tells me that I'm using the Intel integrated graphics. 

Then I added the NSSupportsAutomaticGraphicsSwitching=YES line to pcbnew's Info.plist file (in /Applications/kicad/pcbnew/Contents/Info.plist) and started up Kicad. I opened a design in pcbnew, and with the default canvas gfxCardStatus still tells me that I'm using the integrated graphics.

Switch to the OpenGL canvas, and bang! We're now using the AMD Radeon graphics controller. Seems like redraws and such are VERY fast. I grabbed an IC and started to move it and it redraw FAST.

I switched back to the default canvas, and the graphics controller did NOT switch back to the integrated. However, that grab-and-move-an-IC test is back to be much slower than the accelerated version.

So, yeah, modify the plist file and take advantage of the Radeon graphics! I have no idea how the plist file gets generated as part of the build/packaging process but I will look into it.

I suppose that on a machine where this sort of graphics switching doesn't exist the entry in the plist will be ignored.

-a