Newbie - intro+question

Genghis Khan

Hey guys,

My name's Michael. I've recently gotten a job in an architects office, and my main job seems to be 3D modelling for which they use SketchUp.

I used Rhino a lot at uni, so it's taken me a while to get used to SketchUp and I found myself coming here a lot in my google searches for help.

Anyway, enough with the background...now to the question

I'm working on a Dell laptop (it's as good as I could find in the office..) 2.4GHz Core2Duo, 3GB RAM, 8600M GT 256MB .

The problem I have is that when I add furniture into the buildings, it takes forever to move and zoom around the model. Sometimes when copying several components at a time it just crashes.

I download the tables/chairs/computers from the 3D warehouse, make them components (which I've heard is good) and copy them over to the file with the building in it. The individual components tend to be 0.5-1MB and I fit out 3-4 classrooms per building. The file sizes vary from 5-10MB.

Is there an obvious reason why my SketchUp experience is so slow? Are there ways to be more efficient with components? Or does SketchUp need a gaming rig to deal with rotating around all of those vertices?

Thanks for any help you guys can give

Michael

Rich O Brien

As with any external model, you have no control of the modelling process. So taking time to understand what someone has done to this model is time consuming.

My tip would be to purge each model of materials and components before bringing them into your model. There are two plugins I swear by

CleanUp
Remove Materials

both are by Thomtom, you'll find them in the Plugin Forum. They'll strip the newly downloaded models of oddities and materials leaving you a blank canvas to paint your own textures. Anytime I use 3DWH models I like to view and edit them separately before bring into other models. This gives me more control of file size.

Placing components on their own layer, which can be toggled on/off is another tip which helps limit strain on your laptop.

I'm sure others will suggest even more useful tips and know more on your hardware than me. But this is my workflow when handling external models.

Genghis Khan

Cool, thanks...I'll look into those. I've read a bit about 'RubyScripts', are they difficult to make? Or is it worth just d/l-ing pre-made ones?

I already use layers quite a lot and it's still slow.
However, now I've turned down the screen from 1920x1200 to 1680x1050 and turned off all the graphical aids I could (like anti-aliasing), and this has imporved it quite a bit, but it still staggers at awkward times

And thanks for the info about the 3D-WareHouse...are the models generally so bad that you should beware of them?

arjunmax09

try using groups and components.. they make your file size a lot less... plus... your performance also improves.... I don't ever use loose geometry in my model

chrisjk

As the latest SU newsletter says, some folk advocate the use of both layers and the outliner to control model visibility and thus the "heaviness of whatever you have to deal with at one time.