Could you post some example files? Or at least screen shots of the before and after?

Good to hear it's working!

In the end it turned out that there was a mass of dust that had basically become compressed into a block of felt, obstructing the cooling vents in such a way as to be -very- difficult to see save from just the right angle. So, mystery solved. Thanks guys!

Ok So my system is a bit better but still not performing good and I now have to restart every 30 mins or so instead of 10. I wiped all sketchup 8 and 13 files. Reinstalled 13. Then added the sketucation plugin mananger and like 3 or 4 plugins that I need. Simple stuff like center point, dxf export, and something else. Complexity of the file does have some bearing on it. A simple file just lasts longer before it starts to get jerky on the zoom and then slowly degrade to unusable. Doesn't matter if I'm using it or not. I can just leave it open and come back to have it almost locked up. The rest of my system doesn't have any problems. Just sketchup. I swapped the graphics card back to the better one and the issues is on both of them. Direct Diag doesn't show any issues. Everything is active and I don't have any problems with anything but sketchup. As for my memory, 500mb is labeled as free. I have 3gb and have maxed out my windows 7 32 bit system. Windows 7 will just eat all the memory that is left so I technically have like 2 gb free with windows eating it all for transitions and other crap that it will dynamically stop using as my programs need it. Driver is up to date. I've tried rolling it back and it doesn't change. SU 8 had the same issue. That is what prompted me to upgrade in the first place. So far, I'm not impressed with SU 2013. It's also the free version. I have not run a memory test but scheduled windows to do one the next time I reboot. Resetting the workspace from within the preferences menu fixes it once or twice but then it gets all weird and requires a full reboot. Other then a known issue with the video driver crashing during flash video, My system runs fine and doesn't have any heating problems any more. Games run fine for hours. The only program that is screwy is sketchup. Could it be the sketucation plugin? I didn't have problems before that was installed. It's the only thing I can think that changed around the time that the problem started and it has been in every instance that I have tried. It was stable for a bit without any plugins but I can't do actual work without my dxf exporter so I generally only tested it for a bit then installed sketucation and the dxf exporter. I might try a fresh install without that plugin.

All, thanks for the posts/links. I will look into them.

Selecting problem areas and intersecting faces with models might get you part way there.

If you have the Maxwell plugin, working with proxies is the way to go. Its also very simple. Nothing complicated, just place a component that is linked to a .mxs proxy. See the manual of the plugin. I have done much larger files with proxies, impossible to do any other way. I could render 50 trees (700 Mb each) without much problems sraight from Sketchup. In Sketechup the trees represent just a simple volume. The way we work now is to use Sketchup as a placement tool for Maxwell proxies. The SU files are very responsive and easy to work with. No matter how complicated. What you do is model in Sketchup parts of your model and export those parts to .mxs You can assemble those parts later on in SU. You can put textures on your model parts either in Sketchup or Maxwell Studio. But we never use many materials in one Sketchup masterfile since this slows down Sketchup a lot. After we done the parts and have set up the .mxs proxy we delete the materials in Sketchup since they are no longer needed for these parts. That is one of the great advantages. Very small SU files. I have done office interiors with flowers, tables, seats etc that could never have been done in a single SU file unless these files would have grown into +Gigabytes monsters. Have a look here, http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=52418 Proxies is how we work these days and how everybody will work in the future (with SU). Francois

Maybe Fredo Scale by Fredo 6 is your friend ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPbb8PPGtVg

I'm glad that helped. You'll find it is helpful for other reasons than just orbiting. Drawing with the the default axis orientation and solid blue up will make shadows correct and make your standard views more useful. If your model has a front, place it so it runs along the red axis direction and those standard views will all click into place.

@polzultov said: Hey guys, Patrick at Trimble sent me a phone number to call since I wasn't able to proceed to the payment page for 2013... and now the number is listed as non-working. Any ideas? 303-546-1100 didn't work on a few tries... Of course the more I read here about the new release the more suspect I become... Edit- Got an email back from P saying to call the number... let's see what happens tomorrow. That's good to hear

thank you. i'm sorry that was such an easy one. i googled to no avail. i'm guilty, after a few years of playing with sketchup, of not sitting myself down to a top to bottom investigation of all the menu items and their purposes. i've learned as i go and sometimes the easy stuff just eludes me.

That's the one. I owe you for that Massimo.

Just changed the heading to 'SketchUp Troubleshoot [Plugin set up advice]' to make it more searchable Mike

You can't apply multiple styles in a single scene in SketchUp but it wouldn't be difficult to combine different image exports using different styles in an image editor. In fact I do that quite frequently. There were three or four different styles used for this image if you count the shadows as a style. [image: 6743292439_e1e53c5165.jpg] Four different styles on this one, too. [image: 5601922220_e0c573092b.jpg]

@dave r said: Open SU8 from the icon. After it loads you can close it. Then you should be able to open files in SU8 instead of SU7. Yeah, I seem to remember something about it opening in whatever version you used last. Tried that but it didn't work, so I just uninstalled SU 7, problem solved

You can send me small example. I'll try to get some time to look at it.

Yes exactly, thanks for the link.

I managed to find my issue. When creating a surface from contours, I did not realise the resulting entity is a group. So I was actually applying the texture to the group, rather than the actual surface. When I went into the group and directly applied to the surface, it worked properly.

Hey Rich, thanks for the interactive pdf, can I open this with acrobat? never used one before

@unknownuser said: Where is the quote from? Yes from here I had FreeShip since many years: it has a very good Manual (in French very well detailed! This crazzy free prog permit to make anything** and has some poweful functions (unfold) but was very not fiendly UI and ergonomy compared to SU! ** in free is limited to hulls that are symmetrical with respect to the centerplane. So for car or plane that is sufficient! [image: t6mh_freship.jpg] [image: JWyf_freship1.jpg]