Sketchup is broken
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Is this the beginning of the end of SU for the power users due to Googles unwillingness to develop it? This has been a real pet peeve of mine for quite a while now.
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I've had some very strange things happening as well. I usually nix Sang right off the bat in a new file, but now he won't highlight until I draw something in SketchUp, only then will the blue component box show and let me cut him. Also seems to be crashing more.
I really haven't added any new ruby's for a while, and took care of the problems that certain unnamed rendering applications used to cause me. I don't know.
Running Skp 7 Pro, and still thinking Skp 6 was more stable. -
@dale said:
I've had some very strange things happening as well. I usually nix Sang right off the bat in a new file, but now he won't highlight until I draw something in SketchUp, only then will the blue component box show and let me cut him. Also seems to be crashing more.
I really haven't added any new ruby's for a while, and took care of the problems that certain unnamed rendering applications used to cause me. I don't know.
Running Skp 7 Pro, and still thinking Skp 6 was more stable.That sounds like an issue with your graphic card. Driver issue. SU7 makes use of the newer OpenGL features which means it'll behave differently if your drivers aren't fully up to it. What card do you have? And when did you last update your drivers?
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Well the strange thing is it is happening on 2 machines. One has a ATI Radeon HD 2600, and The other on is an old G4 mac laptop, which is at home, so I'm not sure what the specs are for it. Both were running fine until about 2 weeks ago, so I'm not sure if a file I transferred between the 2 machines has something to do with it or not. I checked for updates fairly recently (when I installed Thea about a month ago) and I was up to date, but I'll check again just to be sure.
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before blaming it all on sketchup i would look around for other causes: system, machine, etc.
i have none of the reported problems. right now i am working on a big file (8 million edges, 2.4 million faces) and it is going fairly well.
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I noticed something yesterday.
I've been working on a Room for Poser...
the radiator I've built, as normal I built in quarters. on my Windows 7 64bit machine, exploding the group, copying, merging then grouping the quarters just failed. totally.
I left the machine for an hour at one point exploding the section.. and nothing SU just sat there. checking task manager showed it had'nt locked up.. it just wasn't doing anything.
I moved my SU setup to my Laptop - windows 7 32bit, lesser specs than the desktop... and tried there.
10 minutes is all it took to copy, explode, merge then save the completed radiator.
I'm beginning to wonder... problems on 64bit OS? on the laptop with the same Ruby's etc, SU is faster more responsive etc than the better specced 64bit machine.
I can't test it for certain.. but if someone else could..
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@dale said:
and still thinking Skp 6 was more stable.
I have a gut feeling you are right. I wish I still had SU v6.
Its the SU syndrome: Stupidly Upgrading
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Tom, Have been doing that for a while now. Concerns with plugin, etc. As for the scattering menus problems, I noticed that they will not scramble until the shrinking window overlaps the furthest menu, so I place the longest menu at the end, and arrange the rows accordingly. Not a fix, but a so-so workaround. Do I have the right menu problem?
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First off, I agree that these are things that should not be able to break. No matter how many plugins there are installed, it should not grey out menu items.
BUT, since we know it does, maybe we need to put pressure on the plugin writers to not put stuff into the right click context menu? If we eliminated all right click contect plugins, would that solve the issue?
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@khai said:
I'm beginning to wonder... problems on 64bit OS? on the laptop with the same Ruby's etc, SU is faster more responsive etc than the better specced 64bit machine.
I can't test it for certain.. but if someone else could..
A good observation! I still have a removable HDD with contains XP sp3, Since SU is not a 64 bit application, perhaps it will do better under the older OS. I will give it try.
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@chris fullmer said:
BUT, since we know it does, maybe we need to put pressure on the plugin writers to not put stuff into the right click context menu? If we eliminated all right click contect plugins, would that solve the issue?
good point! but then again maybe the Ruby API has some leaks in its current version?
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If indeed SU runs better with an older OS and lower spec rig then Google has a serious problem and need to get their product in line with today's technology.
I have bitched about it's poly limits endless times, now we are having bigger issues, IMO SU is becoming 'Etchasketch' of 3D modeling and either needs to catch up to basic standards or we need to migrate over to Bonsai.
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no no
not older OS. I meant 32bit vs 64bit. with my work here I found Win7 32bit was better than 64bit. but that's just one sample... I think tho it's something that should be looked at and discounted if it's just a fluke with the scene I was working on. -
Well there are a number of issues. Not the lest of which is the number of addons both commercial and free that are being written for SU. I have already found one culprit. With still no definitive answer.
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@thomthom said:
I moved all my plugins to a temp folder. And my menus are back to normal now. I'm adding them back as I need them one at a time.
What you will find is a plugin that start some type of bad behavior and will think you have the problem solved. However if you redo the exercise, changing the order of testing plugins, you will find out that particular plugin may not be causing the problem. Now some other plugin will cause the problem.
So just removing or not installing that plugin, which may work OK all other times is not really the problem. I have tried your method and I have never found a reliable source of the problems. You however, are much more in-tune and knowledgeable with script writing and you may be able to spot a problem.
What I know is that there seems to be no problem with any plugin that have a toolbar icon. Therefore, to me the problem is in the contents, edit or plugin drop down menu.
I would pay good money for some script writer, like TIG or CADFATHER, if they would take some plugins, with the author's permission, and make toolbar icons. Getting rid of the script in the context, edit and plugin menus selection and just allowing the toolbar icon to select and use the plugin. And the toolbar author would split the cost with the script writer. This way everyone make some money.
I don't want to cheat anyone, but the plugins have destoyed a very simple and useful program.
If you look at some plugins, they come up in the contents menu, the plugin menu and maybe some other menu, like the draw or tools. Plugin don’t have to be in all these different areas to be functional.
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@unknownuser said:
@thomthom said:
I moved all my plugins to a temp folder. And my menus are back to normal now. I'm adding them back as I need them one at a time.
What you will find is a plugin that start some type of bad behavior and will think you have the problem solved. However if you redo the exercise, changing the order of testing plugins, you will find out that particular plugin may not be causing the problem. Now some other plugin will cause the problem.
So just removing or not installing that plugin, which may work OK all other times is not really the problem. I have tried your method and I have never found a reliable source of the problems. You however, are much more in-tune and knowledgeable with script writing and you may be able to spot a problem.
What I know is that there seems to be no problem with any plugin that have a toolbar icon. Therefore, to me the problem is in the contents, edit or plugin drop down menu.
I would pay good money for some script writer, like TIG or CADFATHER, if they would take some plugins, with the author's permission, and make toolbar icons. Getting rid of the script in the context, edit and plugin menus selection and just allowing the toolbar icon to select and use the plugin. And the toolbar author would split the cost with the script writer. This way everyone make some money.
I don't want to cheat anyone, but the plugins have destoyed a very simple and useful program.
If you look at some plug ins, they come up in the contents menu, the plug-in menu and maybe some other menu, like the draw or tools. Plug-ins don’t have to be in all these different areas to be functional.
I'd like to see a plug-in to load and unload plug-ins. Kind of a plug-in Manager. Because sometimes I need to use the plug-in but not the other one, and vice versa. I have noticed with more plug-ins added to my computer the longer it takes SU to load and/or do certain things.
And as was mentioned, I think there are some plug-ins which break other plug-ins (not on purpose). If you have 50 plug-ins, trying to find the culprit can take a long time. Plus it might even be a combination of plug-ins.
So that is why I think a plug-in manager would be beneficial. I'll step off my soapboax.
Rick
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@unknownuser said:
What you will find is a plugin that start some type of bad behavior and will think you have the problem solved. However if you redo the exercise, changing the order of testing plugins, you will find out that particular plugin may not be causing the problem. Now some other plugin will cause the problem.
Yea - I'm pretty sure there is no single plugin that causes the diabled menus. The disabled menus can be reproduced without any installed. But having a number of plugins makes the situation worse. That's why I'm now rebuilding my collection by adding strictly what I use - not having loads of nice-to-have plugins.
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Well let me add myself to the list as well. I have also noticed this in the last few weeks. It's not every time I start SU but it is happening. I am on WinXP SP3, dual-core AMD based system with an nVidia GF8600GT card.
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@ Rick,
That would be a great idea, but until the wandering plugin menus problem gets fixed, it wouldn't be worth it. Every time you'd enable something you'd be chasing menus again.
Add me to the list as well of grayed-out plugin menus. I haven't updated to the most recent build of SU, but the problem seems to be worse with folks who have. That, or as they've updated, the number of plugins has increased as well and is part of the problem. Anyway, sometimes it happens very quickly ~ 5 minutes after SU start, and other times it'll take a half hour before the menus go grey. I wonder if it has anything to do with a particular operation happening simultaneously with auto-save? Quick way to figure that out would be to disable auto-save.
Win7 64 bit, Nvidia 9800 GTX+, Core Duo processor.
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You people are making me nervous.
I use sketchup pro current release.
I spend, on average, about 6 hours a day working with it.
I have never experienced any of the issues being discussed here.
"knock on wood"
I use less than five plugins.Is the over riding consensus that the plugins are the issue?
Have the issues been reported by anybody using a "clean" install
of su?
If it is a plug-in issue, is it Sketchups responsibility to adapt
their program to (for lack of a better term) home made scripts or is
it the script writers responsibility to make them work with su?The answer is probably...both.
I do feel a need to have an official su representative comment on
this and put fears to rest.Who are the official su people...are they part of this forum?
Paul
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