Sketchup 7.1 bugs

John Sayers · 23 Oct 2009, 09:36

I've found that the guides remain grey even if you change the global colour (I prefer bright pink) - they also don't change to yellow when selected so you can't select them!

Ah - problem solved - so you must have the Model Axes selected to get the guides to work properly!! when you switch off axes you switch off guides. I never thought of the guides as axes.

frv · 23 Oct 2009, 23:03

Am I doing something wrong or is it 7.1
I am changing the width and or height of a texture in the color-edit material panel but nothing happens. I can not imagine its a bug not seen before. I a must be doing something wrong.
I am on OSX Leopard.
Any help is apreciated much.
Francois

frv · 23 Oct 2009, 23:22

Just deleted my p.list preference file and started up again and its all fine again. I can now change the dimensions of textures effectively again. Have no idea what caused the preferences to become corrupted.

frv · 24 Oct 2009, 00:20

and the bug is now back again. Somehow the settings for the width and height of a texture does not work anymore. I never had a problem with this on SU 6.
I am on a Macbookpro, OSX 10.5.8
Francois

driven · 28 Oct 2009, 02:44

According to Apple Support (Ireland) and the 'Genius' at the apple store my MacBook's ATI Radeon X1600 is dead and needs replacing.

Problems started while using SU7 with OSX 10.5.7 and only got worse with SU7.1 and 10.5.8.

As well as most the symptoms described in these posts, I started having lots of bugsplats, freezes and crashes.

Problems also showed up in other software and Safari 4 and then Finder.

Thinking it was something I had added (alfa/beta software, rubies, etc.) I did a cull on my system, rebuilt permissions did a clean instal eventually ending up with a striped down 10.4 and a virginal SU7.1 and xTools as my only content.

I mean NO documents, NO images, nothing except the problem, which may confirm Apples opinion.

However, everything works in 'Safe Mode' and has done all the way thru, which is why I think it's something to do with quartz extreme drivers.

These are turned off in 'Safe Mode' and my glitches and crashes go away.

Anyone else on a Mac want to try 'safe mode' and let me know if it stops your problems?

P.S. I have also been using also QuartzDebug (in xTools) to turn on/off Quartz extreme for SU but it doesn't completely eliminate problems.

bjanzen · 28 Oct 2009, 14:25

Great find, driven. When you boot in safe mode, you're not loading your graphics card drivers, so all OpenGL commands are run in software, not on your graphics card. If you're into these things, you can look at http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KEXTConcept/KEXTConceptLoading/loading_kexts.html.

When a user was having a graphics card issue, I've mucked with some of this. You can modify which kernel extensions load in safe boot mode, so I can still load the graphics card drivers but disable other kernel extensions by editing the OSBundleRequired setting in the kernel extension.

Now just as they say when I watch "Nitro Circus" or "MythBusters" with my teen-age sons, DO NOT TRY THIS STUNT <break to "State of Massachusetts" by Dropkick Murphys>

b

thomthom · 28 Oct 2009, 14:52

@bjanzen said:

<break to "State of Massachusetts" by Dropkick Murphys>

http://open.spotify.com/track/4g9aB6nGJxQA1ZHtzAXirL
Great with audio to go with forum posts!

driven · 28 Oct 2009, 19:33

Hi bjanzen,
hope it contributes to a long term fix, it seems to me that intel (not JUST apple) are pushing the switch to BIOS EFI boots at the expense of quite recent (2-3yr old) hardware.

Today I found Apple have released a patch for the current MacBook Pro suffering from many of my symptoms in Snow Leopard, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3498, yet they seem totally surprised that I'm saying I don't think I need a £600 CPU or a new MacBook if it still works in SafeMode and used to work prior to the new EFI introduced with 10.5.

Luckily I only use the MacBook for making components while waiting drawings on my iMac to complete, it's no where near as buggy in SU, but does cause log reporting to spin out of control every now and again.

@unknownuser said:

If you're into these things

not really but if it can save me upgrading I guess I'll have to learn,
unless you could throw together a SU Safe boot package with internet but no QuartzExtreme...

john

bjanzen · 29 Oct 2009, 15:56

This update was issued 6 months ago, and I'm 99.9% sure that it's incorporated into Snow Leopard, which was released 2 months ago. If you have AppleCare, or it failed while you had AppleCare, then get them to replace it. If not, private message me and we can discuss this further... not sure that working around broken hardware is a good topic of general discussion.

b

bjanzen · 29 Oct 2009, 21:22

Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't add today's announcement http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/making-search-more-musical.html and a link to http://www.google.com/search?&q=Dropkick+Murphys+State+of+Massachusetts

tim · 2 Nov 2009, 05:04

@sketchup guide tommy said:

Hi Everyone,

@tim said:

there is a really annoying wait after stopping moving before they re-appear.

It sounds like folks have pretty much explained this behavior. We knew questions about this functionality would come up, so we wrote a Help Center article to help explain what's going on:

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

(sketchup.google.com)

OK, I have a little more info to add on this issue.

Firstly I really don't see it as being related to the suggested link because it is so intermittent; this is a fairly small model with not much in the way of complicated shapes and crucially it can be moved and rotated without dropping the textures and dimensions almost all the time. In order to trigger some "gosh this is taking along while Ill just simplify the render a while" condition some other time consuming activity must be being triggered in a confusing way. It doesn't happen every day, nor every time I open the file, nor as a result of changing view type or whatever. It is apparently random.
Secondly, when it does start to occur there is a very strange way to stop it happening that I discovered by accident. I simply swap to another scene and back. Almost always there is a scene (I have maybe 15 scenes in my file) where all is fine and going back to to the troublesome one after visiting that 'good' scene stops the problem. So, problem in sceneA, swap to sceneD, go back to sceneA, no more problem in sceneA. A couple of times I have followed this procedure and not fixed the problem but swapping to sceneX and back works.

All rather odd. Dontcha love software?

John Sayers · 17 Nov 2009, 01:20

Has anyone experienced problems with Thunderbird email not recognising 7.1 .skp files and sending them as text??

Gaieus · 19 Nov 2009, 12:03

You mean as simple text files or files with a txt extension? If this latter, what if you rename the extension to skp?

NewOne · 19 Nov 2009, 13:39

@john sayers said:

Has anyone experienced problems with Thunderbird email not recognising 7.1 .skp files and sending them as text??

Well, this happened to me when sending dxf files

remus · 19 Nov 2009, 14:11

Sounds like a problem with thunderbird, not sketchup.

Gumika · 21 Nov 2009, 21:35

Anyone else experiencing this: it started with SU 7 and got worse with 7.1. Every time I open a model that has textures, SU crashes. It happened on two computers, both running WinXP SP2, one has a Radeon4830 card, the other has an on-board Intel thing. Now I can't use ANY textures/materials at all. I tried different graphics settings, uninstall then reinstall SU but that didn't help. Any suggestions? Should I revert back to SU 6 or what?

thomthom · 21 Nov 2009, 22:00

Have you updated your graphic drivers?
Does SU still crash if you turn off Hardware acceleration? They it doesn't, then it's an issue with your graphic card driver.

Gumika · 22 Nov 2009, 09:28

Hm, that seems to be the problem. At least with the Radeon card, after updating it's driver SU doesn't crash and textures are displayed normally. Thanks for the advice!

Gaieus · 22 Nov 2009, 09:30

Hi Gumika!

According to this (Hungarian) description, your ATI card should support OpenGL required for SU (it supports 2.0 while SU uses 1.5). So as Thom suggested, updating its driver should fix your problems.

As for your integrated chipset in the other machine - it will most probably never fully support OpenGL therefore indeed, disabling hardware acceleration in SU (Window menu > Preferences > OpenGL settings) would be the best choice. It will run a bit slower but be stable at least.

John Sayers · 23 Nov 2009, 03:00

@remus said:

Sounds like a problem with thunderbird, not sketchup.

the people at thunderbird say sketchup must have changed it's file format so thunderbird no longer recognises them - thunderbird used to send pro 7.0 files but won't send 7.1. I now have to zip them up before I send.

To be honest I'm tearing my head out because I have to keep up with the updates because my forum members and clients are always downloading the latest version of sketchup and it's not backwards compatible. I'd be a lot happier if I was still working with sketchup Pre Google as every update so far has significantly changed the program. the mouse has changed dramatically - it's extremely hard to move things around as the snap functions are now as good as useless, if you get it to lock to an edge you can then move it around from there by dragging along other lines. Now if I zoom into check the position of a guide line it dissappears. if I zoom into check an edge the whole picture acts like a section plane has been added, totally weird and the pink line option when disecting a face (i.e the perpendicular on an angled piece) rarely is offered as an option.

Thanks @last - I hope you are happy in the Bahamas.