IMac
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I use SU7 on a IMac 2.66GHz 2GB DDR3 with 10.5.6 OSX. I am working on a 12.1 MB model of a house that include 3D warehouse shrubs and bushes. The house materials are basically brick, stone and a shake roof. When in "shade with texture" view, any editing or orbiting I get the color wheel and nothing happens for a minute. When in hidden line and shadows unchecked I can model pretty fast. If I put in more ram would it help? Any suggestions? I would be happy to email a 1000 kb jpg of the scene if that helps.
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Hi Ken,
Textures and shadows are primarily delivered by your video card. You haven't told us about that. However always keep in mind that extensive 3D entourage can easily cripple down your SU. Didplaying them is mainly done by the processor but in your case (as you can easily navigate with no textures and shadows on), I'd be more suspicious of the video system.
Do you have Hardware acceleration on under Preferences > OpenGL settings? (AFAIK it's accessible from the Sketchup menu on Macs)
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how well organized is your model? are you using layers and scenes to hide stuff you do not need to see while orbiting? no GPU will handle a large file with everything on.
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My IMac has a NVIDIA GeForce 9400 video card. The house has all four sides modeled with materials. The client wanted a view of the back and a view of the front so I have 2 scenes. I have no layers. Thanks
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@ken kuhlman said:
My IMac has a NVIDIA GeForce 9400 video card. The house has all four sides modeled with materials. The client wanted a view of the back and a view of the front so I have 2 scenes. I have no layers. Thanks
you have a good machine with a good GPU so perhaps the problem is that you do not use layers for visibility management. have a look at this video: the first part teaches one to use layers and scenes to handle big files. this will probably help you.
regards.
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Hi Ken,
I assume your trees and shrubs are not "face me" components but 3D re-construction of plants?
If that is the case, I would say that shadow is the primary obstacle to your navigating through the model.
SU has to calculate every shadows in your view everytime you move, so avoid having complex shadows when navigate, i.e., turn shadows off or put all plants into one layer and keep the layer out of sight while you model and navigate.
12MB model size alone won't be a problem. We often handle much bigger models with no problem with less powerful graphic cards.
I don't think more RAM will help you much. -
On the top of my head, try updating mac os: it has fixed a lot of major glitches for me on my Imac
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