Make sketchup more stable?

thomthom

i think SU7 is way more unstable. i think if i use for an hour i'll get probably two crashes, but it does seem to crash mostly when i'm using podium so it could be either?

Could be. But I'm wondering if it could be hardware related. What graphic card do you have? And do you have the latest drivers?
It could be that you repeatedly are hitting some bug that makes SU crash. There's lots of software where some people never notices any bugs while other do simply due to workflow. For example: I had V-Ray for Sketchup constantly crash on me, and I seemed pretty lonely in having the problem. There was a few others, but the majority had no problems. What it came down to was that I didn't use the Colour Wheel in the SU Material editor.

Chris Fullmer

I agree, SU7 has been just as stable as 6 for me. And a few things have been better, and it runs overall faster. It has not crashed on me yet (except for a mistakes I've made while learning to program in ruby ). I'd have to guess its something more than just SU that is causing the problems,

Chris

Gaieus

SU 7 has only crashed on me when I was trying to expose it to extensive testing and "torturing" - often with some faulty files and6or modelling work-flow examples (mostly provided by others) that intentionally lead to crashes.

After all, it's not a big deal to create invalid geometry in SU and from then you never know what will happen to the file; SU fixes it or not, crashes or not...

dale

@gaieus said:

After all, it's not a big deal to create invalid geometry in SU and from then you never know what will happen to the file; SU fixes it or not, crashes or not...

Where I come from we call that "Garbage in, Garbage out"
I have been ranting away about problems in another thread called: Export from Su7 to Su 6 (Solved?)
Sorry but I can't figure out how to link it
Just one question: Are you importing files from other Cad software, or modeling from scratch?

xrok1

@thomthom said:

@xrok1 said:

i think SU7 is way more unstable. i think if i use for an hour i'll get probably two crashes, but it does seem to crash mostly when i'm using podium so it could be either?

Could be. But I'm wondering if it could be hardware related. What graphic card do you have? And do you have the latest drivers?
It could be that you repeatedly are hitting some bug that makes SU crash. There's lots of software where some people never notices any bugs while other do simply due to workflow. For example: I had V-Ray for Sketchup constantly crash on me, and I seemed pretty lonely in having the problem. There was a few others, but the majority had no problems. What it came down to was that I didn't use the Colour Wheel in the SU Material editor.

nvidia 8600gt
i do keep my drivers up to date, and i've been using the same machine for close to 2 years now, mostly with SU6 without the same problems. i might go back to 6.4 for a while just for comparison.

Gaieus

@dale said:

I have been ranting away about problems in another thread called: Export from Su7 to Su 6 (Solved?)
Sorry but I can't figure out how to link it

Yes, I know that topic.

@unknownuser said:

Just one question: Are you importing files from other Cad software, or modeling from scratch?

You don't need to import anything to create invalid geometry.

Try yourself with this file

InvalidGeometry.skp

hebrides

I find that GE and SU7 are having a struggle working together.
I have tried the upgrade but got this:
That put a quick end to the adventure.

thomthom

@hebrides said:

I find that GE and SU7 are having a struggle working together.
I have tried the upgrade but got this:[attachment=0:1muxkouc]warning.jpg[/attachment:1muxkouc]
That put a quick end to the adventure.

Seems you have downloaded the free version while you have Pro installed.

Gaieus

Even then, it shouldn't cause a problem.

thomthom

That's what the message seem to indicate though...

hebrides

Yes I have pro 6 and there is no way I am going to remove it to install free SU7. To many hints from others re licencing issues. Haven't got the patience to deal with the muddle over re-installing pro-6.

I'll just wait until I'm ready to buy pro7.

Gaieus

Pro (and/or Free) 6 (or even earlier versions) can simply co-exist and work with either Pro or Free 7 on the same machine. You can even run them at the same time. No need to uninstall anything.

remus

In theory, anyway. the dialog would seem to indicate some funny business.

Gaieus

Well, the dialog doesn't say what pro is installed, then he says he had problems with GE and SU 7?

linea

To answer Dales question most of the time we model from scratch. When I import cad plans I always delete them and purge as soon as I can. I think we are just building some very big models that SU is struggling with. But IMO SU6 is more stable than SU7.

dale

@gaieus said:

You don't need to import anything to create invalid geometry.

[attachment=1:39rys55b]ScreenShot021.png[/attachment:39rys55b]
Try yourself with this file

I think in a sense this is some of the problems with cad import files. I find the files can be inaccurate. Of course this depends on the cad jockey, but aside from the need to "weld" the lines because they don't necessarily meet in corners (or they cross over each other) I also find now after lots of frustration that they are sometimes off axis just ever so slightly, which can end up creating just the geometry you have exemplified.
As for SU 7 Being less stable than SU6, that is my experience up to now, but I'm back in 7 again, and after correcting the Cad stuff, must say 7 is running perfectly.

AndrewS

@hebrides said:

I find that GE and SU7 are having a struggle working together.
I have tried the upgrade but got this:[attachment=0:b9sx5myj]warning.jpg[/attachment:b9sx5myj]
That put a quick end to the adventure.

I will look into this issue and let you know what I find.

In the meantime, please download and install Google SketchUp Pro 7. If you decide not to purchase the upgrade, it will revert to "free" after an 8-hour trial period. I do not think you will have any problems installing SketchUp Pro 7 alongside Google SketchUp Pro 6. They were meant to work together without incident.

AndrewS

Moderator, feel free to relocate this response if appropriate.

@andrews said:

I will look into this issue and let you know what I find.

In the meantime, please download and install Google SketchUp Pro 7. If you decide not to purchase the upgrade, it will revert to "free" after an 8-hour trial period. I do not think you will have any problems installing SketchUp Pro 7 alongside Google SketchUp Pro 6. They were meant to work together without incident.

I spoke with the developer who created the Windows installer and we looked into the issue. It is implemented and working as intended.

SketchUp 6 and 7 can absolutely be installed and work side-by-side without any problems. This is because each one uses a different unique ID when we check for previous installations.

The only explanation for the behavior you are seeing is that at some point in the past (even if you've since forgotten about it!), you have already installed the SketchUp Pro 7 trial. Apparently you have now downloaded the installer for SketchUp 7 (Free) and are trying to install that over top of your existing SketchUp Pro 7 installation. This is not allowed, so you get the pop-up message indicating as much. If you have decided against buying the SketchUp Pro 7 product and you want to install the free version, that's OK, but you must first uninstall the Pro 7 version before running the free installer.

The alternative is that instead of uninstalling/reinstalling, you can simply use the updated Pro 7 installer. The Pro product is engineered to revert to free functionality if you do not license it, and then its behavior is identical to that of the free product. Installing with the Pro installer and running in trial mode will give you exactly the same behavior as you would have seen if you installed the free product directly.

Again, we are confident that this has nothing to do with SketchUp 6 already being installed, as its unique ID is completely different. Go to the Control Panel and look at "Add and Remove Programs" and I am sure you will find that SketchUp Pro 7 is already installed on your machine.

linea

Thanks Andrew, just one more thing;

I use Vista, the only ways I can open an SU file is to 1) drag an skp file over the SU icon in the program files directory. 2) click on an existing SU file. If I click on the desktop SU icon it crashes. I know that this is a known problem on Vista. I got round this with SU6 by creating a template file that I kept on my desktop, I clicked on that, opened SU no problem. But now I have SU6(pro) and SU7(free) installed, by default clicking on an SU file will open it in SU7. Is there any way to change that so that by default it opens in SU6?

Jon

AndrewS

@linea said:

But now I have SU6(pro) and SU7(free) installed, by default clicking on an SU file will open it in SU7. Is there any way to change that so that by default it opens in SU6?
Jon

Jon,

I'm bummed to hear you'd rather use SU6 for your skp files than SU7; hopefully one day we'll have made enough changes to convince you to move to 7.

In any case, it is straightforward to modify this. Every file extension is associated with a corresponding program with which it should be opened. You simply need to change the association for skp files from SU7 to SU6.

This article has decent (generic) coverage of the issue.
http://www.nirmaltv.com/2008/07/26/how-to-set-default-file-associations-in-vista/

They use csv files as an example. Remember that you're looking to change skp files.

I hope this helps.