Is my Computer powerful enough for huge SketchUp Models?
-
Hello!
First of all: Sorry for any bad english - i am no native english speaker
I am currently creating a SketchUp Model on my iMac and everything is working fine at the moment. But i am a bit worried because i just have finished about 20% of the Model and the SketchUp-File is already 6MB of size (i already removed all unused components and materials).
Has anyone any experiences with the performance of an iMac and such huge SketchUp Models (bigger than 20MB) ?
Should i be worried to be bankrupt in a few weeks because i need to buy a MacPro?Here are some details about my iMac:
iMac (Mid 2007)
-
Yes, your computer should be able to handle reasonably large models.
Although it is worth noting that file size doesnt make a huge difference to the workability of SU files. The thing you want to watch out for is the poly count as SU tends to slow down considerably when the face count gets in to the hundreds of thousands.
-
thank you remus!
these are very interesting infos for me!according to the faces count (about 40.000 at the moment) and the expected complexity of my model i would expect about 200.000 faces in my model.
-
No worries - I have a model with more than 1.2 million edges and 300,000 faces and that was on an old (3 yo) PC with a 2.7 GHz sinlge core and also a 256 Mb ATI Radeon plus only 512 Mb RAM! (true the whole thing came out less than 7 Mb in file size but that was due to components reused several times and lack of big image files).
True that by the end I had to use some "smart modeling tricks" like
- always model in monochrome mode (no textures) until you really need texturing
- turn shadows off (until you need to examine them and export)
- use layers extensively and only keep visible what you are currently working on (put all entourage onto hidden layers) etc.
Just make life easy for your machine.
-
Hopefully you should be okay, but if you do start having problems the thing t do is just put some of your model on a hidden layer until you need it again.
-
I also remember the recent thread where it was confirmed that over-zealous organization of the model with many levels of nested groups and components makes the model run much slower. So while it can keep the model size on disk quite small, it adds to the processing required to get it on screen. So while grouping and componentizing is essential for efficient modeling, some moderation is required.
Anssi
-
thank you remus, Gaieus, Anssi!!
with the infos and tips you provided i can calm down and go on with my project
have a nice weekend.
Advertisement