Battery not charging when editing heavy document

[WaveF]

Issue:
Battery shows not charging and drop extremely fast when editing heavy document in Designer, and resume charging when I switch to another application. It's not happening before 1.10.4(?) as I remembered, that's a big issue for me, now I have to go back to Windows PC for editing, fortunately I've bought all affinity software on both platforms. 

Document:
- More than 1000 elements
- Embedded another heavy document

Hardware:
- MacBook Pro (16' 2019)
- 2.3G Intel Core i9
- 16G 2667 MHz DDR4
- AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 4G / Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

Software:
- Affinity Designer 1.10.4 with Metal acceleration enabled

OS:
- macOS 10.15.7 Catalina

Battery Info reported by Wattagio:
- Charge Cycles: 246
- Health Status: Good
- Summary: battery will reach is maximum cycles count in 6 years

[stokerg]

Hi @WaveF,

Can't say i've heard of this happening before.  But on checking this page https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh20876/mac it does state 'Your computer is running at a very high performance level that uses more power than the power source provides. For example, some apps — such as video editing software and video games — can require more power and drain the battery more quickly.'

So it does sound like your document is the main cause for this, however we really need to get a copy of the afdesign file from you in order to see what is really happening. If you could upload it to our Dropbox here, we can look into this further.  If you could also provide a screen recording showing the issue, that will be a big help.  One final thing, if you disable Metal Compute, does the issue still happen?

[WaveF]

2 hours ago, stokerg said:

Hi @WaveF,

Can't say i've heard of this happening before.  But on checking this page https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh20876/mac it does state 'Your computer is running at a very high performance level that uses more power than the power source provides. For example, some apps — such as video editing software and video games — can require more power and drain the battery more quickly.'

So it does sound like your document is the main cause for this, however we really need to get a copy of the afdesign file from you in order to see what is really happening. If you could upload it to our Dropbox here, we can look into this further.  If you could also provide a screen recording showing the issue, that will be a big help.  One final thing, if you disable Metal Compute, does the issue still happen?

Screen record and .afdesign file uploaded.
I try to turn off Metal hardware acceleration, and it's not helped, but when I ALSO switch display mode from Metal to OpenGL(Basic), my MacBook Pro can charge normally.

BTW. I use embedded document in my project for quick theme switching.

 

[stokerg]

Hi @WaveF,

Thanks for the recording and file.

I can't replicate it on my M1 MacBook Air and don't currently have access to an Intel based MacBook but i will tomorrow when i'm back in the office, so will do some tests on that  

I suspect by switching to OpenGL you are free up some resources, which is allowing the MacBook to charge but i'll know more once i get this opened on an Intel Mac.

[stokerg]

Hi @WaveF,

If you see this link this is to be expected when working with heavy documents that use a lot of CPU/GPU, which this file will be.  Also checking with the QA team they have confirmed the same.  This would also explain why switching to openGL allows you to charge as openGL, so this uses less resources  

[WaveF]

11 hours ago, stokerg said:

Hi @WaveF,

If you see this link this is to be expected when working with heavy documents that use a lot of CPU/GPU, which this file will be.  Also checking with the QA team they have confirmed the same.  This would also explain why switching to openGL allows you to charge as openGL, so this uses less resources  

Thanks for the reply, I've found the same issue these days when launching other applications such as chrome with many tabs opened, maybe the best solution is switch to the M1 series...