Trying to define SketchUp Limitations

remus · 1 Jul 2010, 12:59

Thanks for the info, i'll have a look in to it.

michaliszissiou · 1 Jul 2010, 17:59

These are not complains remus, we're talking about limitations. SU is a fine app as it is. Others may suffer from lot of bugs.

remus · 1 Jul 2010, 21:08

Oh no, i wasnt suggesting it was a complaint, its just something i havent considered would affect the performance of SU before, so thought itd be interesting to investigate further.

sketchup guide jody · 10 Jul 2010, 00:32

So, I don't know how I missed this last summer but its great...

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=20076

Maybe we can find a different model though, or a way to report out some system specs while also grabbing this data. Sadly I'm no Ruby guru so it might take some time. I do like the idea of any sort of benchmark tools like this so we can have an absolute value type response for different systems. (Incidentally my Core2 Duo MacBook Pro gets about 14.7 FPS from that test.)

I might re-phrase this question (which as I've said is very valuable and still is) in a new post as soon as I better define how people can gather information. This is great for general speed, I need to figure out a test for exports and for imports. (What am I forgetting that we want to test on for a whole-view of performance in SketchUp?)

Cheers,
Jody

LandsArchitect · 15 Jul 2010, 07:06

Hi Jody
I'm pleased you are reviewing sketchup! It's a great program, and I can't wait for the new improved version!

Largest file I have created is 59.8MB, using over 10,000 2D plants with textures. It takes about 20 minutes to render shadows on my Mac Pro 8-core. I too would love to see SU using more of my available power!

One of the biggest issues I find is faces - especially large ones made with circles/arcs. This constantly causes frustration and often crashing, when trying to make a face re-establish.

For LO the biggest file I have is 298 MB, which contains several copies of the 59.8MB SU document from above, with various annotations, etc. It loads relatively quickly, but is slow to change pages (up to 2 minutes), even on my big machine.

If you are really looking to put out new version, I beg you to read SU and LO wishlists - there are so many things we'd love to have - and personally, I'd pay for an upgrade if they had them.

Thanks.
Shannon (Landscape Architect)

meaker vi · 20 Jul 2010, 22:03

I typically create files in the 10-70 meg range, with anywhere from 250,000-4,000,000+ edges and 50,000-1,000,000 faces. I usually experience slowdown when using shadows, textures, large numbers of components (in otherwise small models), more than a certain number of layers (I'm not positive how many it is, but it seems that 10 is about the safe limit), and styles.

One file I'm looking at is roughly 10 megs, but has 4.33 Million edges and almost One Million faces, with 550,000 component instances, 1000 groups, 350 separate components, 10 layers, 263 materials, and 8 styles. It takes awhile to load, sometimes freezes up, but if it loads up works fine as long as I've got "working" settings on, which turn off most of the components, shadows, and uses shaded mode.
Another is 60 megs with less than One million edges and works fine with shadows on. I'm pretty sure that anything can make a model slow, but that it really takes an absurd upper limit to hit that- it's not necessarily file size or number of textures or faces or any one thing in particular.

And I'm running a relatively old Dual-core HP workstation with 2 gigs of RAM.

I believe therefore that the biggest problem for new users is 5 fold:
1) They don't understand or know how to use components properly.
2) They leave shadows/textures/xray on all the time
3) They import from cad and don't purge unnecessary data (esp. layers)
4) They don't use scenes to control styles and cameras.
5) They don't use styles properly- and this is the most important part- because the Sketchup default settings are not the most efficient.

What I mean by #5 is that the 'default' Sketchup style is something that uses profiles, has a colored background, and maybe takes advantage of some other rendering options (I'm not sure what all it's got going on because I NEVER use it). I use one of the last templates- "plan view- feet and inches" or "plan view- metric," because they are the fastest and most efficient. For me, the profiles and other edge effects are KILLER on any file, and will quickly make it impossible to get any work done. However, you can use those "style" settings, you just have to load up the file in a plain view and then turn them on.

Long story short: Make a tab without any style options (shadows, profiles, depth cue, edge effects, x-ray, textures [shaders are ok], or sky/ground colors) turned on for working in. Also disable (by making groups or components and then placing them in layers) any high-poly count objects, such as trees & foliage, cars, possibly the ground, people, etc.. Save the model with this tab open, and make additional tabs for rendered views and cameras and everything should be ok.

alien_killer · 22 Jul 2010, 08:45

if any one has used autoCAD, then sketchup layout is way behind in working drawings. something should be done

Hieru · 22 Jul 2010, 09:59

@unknownuser said:

I believe therefore that the biggest problem for new users is 5 fold:
1) They don't understand or know how to use components properly.
2) They leave shadows/textures/xray on all the time
3) They import from cad and don't purge unnecessary data (esp. layers)
4) They don't use scenes to control styles and cameras.
5) They don't use styles properly- and this is the most important part- because the Sketchup default settings are not the most efficient

You are right that these are things that most new users are unaware of - I've been using sketchup for around 2 years and I only found out about these techniques a few months ago.

It strikes me that these techniques are necessary workarounds that allow you to circumvent the limitations of the software. Doesn't this amount to treating the symptoms rather than the disease?

thomthom · 22 Jul 2010, 10:25

@hieru said:

It strikes me that these techniques are necessary workarounds that allow you to circumvent the limitations of the software. Doesn't this amount to treating the symptoms rather than the disease?

These things are valid of all software. Keeping a clean model or drawing is essential for a good workflow. AutoCAD drawings becomes a nightmare to handle when people don't purge, use block etc.

fester225 · 22 Jul 2010, 10:53

I'm using Sketchup to do mechanical drawings, and the size of my files is inconsequential compared to what you guys are doing. I currently have 2610 edges, and 1372 faces.

I have 22 layers in use at the moment, but that seems reasonable considering that I'm doing a mechanical drawing. If 22 layers is a problem, perhaps we need a fix.

Hieru · 22 Jul 2010, 11:42

@thomthom said:

These things are valid of all software.

I've never had to do this sort of thing with any other software.

Learning good layer management in Photoshop or Illustrator is the closest I've come, but this has never had anything to do with software performance.

@unknownuser said:

Keeping a clean model or drawing is essential for a good workflow.

Well it's one thing to keep a clean model, but another matter entirely if you have to jump through hoops in order to prevent SU from grinding to a halt whilst navigating.

Even if you implement all of the measures mentioned by Meaker VI (all good advice by the way), you are only delaying the inevitable.

If I have an architectural model with lots of landscaping, plants or trees I have to place these elements on a separate layers and keep them hidden if I want to make basic modelling alterations. That doesn't feel like a natural way of working to me - it feels like a workaround.

meaker vi · 22 Jul 2010, 15:59

@fester225 said:

I have 22 layers in use at the moment, but that seems reasonable considering that I'm doing a mechanical drawing. If 22 layers is a problem, perhaps we need a fix.

From what I've done, having lots of layers (a recently imported Civil drawing, for example) by itself does glitch the program occasionally, but it doesn't really slow it down on it's own. If I import a multi-mile area drawing with tons of edges, but still under ~10 megs and has no other features (and I've turned off profiles) the model should still manipulate fine, but every once in a while it'll hang for no apparent reason. That's when I realize I left too many layers in the model and purge them out (since Civil drawings always have too many layers for what I'm doing). Having 10 or 20 or even more layers should never be a problem by itself if the rest of the model is small enough, and it sounds like for you that is true. Just make sure you're using groups and layering them instead of model geometry- geometry in sketchup doesn't like being on separate layers (You move a line on layer "A" and the connected face on hidden layer "B" still moves with it).

As for Hieru's remarks on this being an issue inherent to the software and a bug that we're solving the symptoms of, I'd say that is only half true, but completely fair. The software was not meant to do what many of us are doing with it; though as our friendly neighborhood guide Jody has pointed out- the engineers didn't put the limitations in on purpose, so that we could push its limits.

However, the untrue part is that you don't have any other software that is constantly rendering your model at all times like Sketchup is trying to do. I use Revit, Blender, Maya, PhotoShop, Illustrator, InDesign, CAD, and Sketchup, and of those, Sketchup is the only one constantly rendering everything all the time. While Revit, Blender, and Maya will all show shading and perhaps even textures, they usually only display basic model geometry. Revit can show shadows in a working window, but it slows it down to a grinding halt, much more so than I've experienced with Sketchup on equivalently-sized models. PhotoShp and the others don't really render anything, CAD often staggers at silly things like "hatches" and "lines," while zooming in a good Photoshop file with filters and blending modes can take some time on my machine. So, in order to make Sketchup do what I want, I turn off the "rendering" options - lines with weights, styles, shadows, textures, etc.

I do similar things in all the programs, the only difference is that Sketchup starts out with many of it's most processor-intensive rendering options turned on and there isn't a one-click "Draw" mode, which I think every other program I listed has.

Hieru · 22 Jul 2010, 17:17

I certainly didn't mean to give the impression that I was spitting daggers at SU.

I've only really scratched the surface when it comes to SU's potential, but I think it's a fantastic programme and I get a great deal of enjoyment out of modelling with SU........sometimes I just get a bit frustrated with issues that seem to have been a problem for a while.

Like you say, the limitations weren't designed into the software. Let's just hope that the next version allows people to push the limits even farther.

I imagine that if every issue raised on this thread was dealt with tomorrow, it wouldn't be long before the most talented SU gurus started to complain of new limitations.

michaliszissiou · 22 Jul 2010, 19:06

The obj exporter should be in the free version of SU, nobody has to pay for this. Am I right? A simple request.
SU has a bad reputation around just because of this!

Hieru · 23 Jul 2010, 00:54

@michaliszissiou said:

The obj exporter should be in the free version of SU, nobody has to pay for this. Am I right? A simple request.
SU has a bad reputation around just because of this!

The next version won't have a DWG/DXF importer.

What's that about?

There I go looking on the negative side of things again ........I guess my GPP must be on the fritz!

liam887 · 27 Jul 2010, 13:34

What is the largest SketchUp file you've created? Would you consider it to be efficiently made (a healthy file?) Could you make it smaller? What aspects did you "write off" and just not usable in that large file? How many edges did it have? Faces? Materials?

The largest file I have created is 130MB without textures just basic grey material. It was a healthy file and couldn't be cut down very much. Was pretty slow and unresponsive however at this stage.

What is the largest file you've imported into SketchUp? What kind of file was it? Did you have to alter the file any before you got it to actually import into SketchUp? Did you have to do much clean-up on the file once it was in SketchUp?

About 40MB. Yeah 3ds files always need cleaning up getting rid of all the extra geometry. This can take anything from hours to days, ive spent a week removing geometry before.

Whats the largest file you've exported from SketchUp? What kind of file did you create? How long did the export take? Did it export successfully on the first try or did you have to adjust your file or export settings some before it worked?

Biggest file I have exported is 30-50MB however its pretty touch and go it takes absolutely forever and crashes after about 10% 9 out of 10 times with large files.

Pout · 28 Jul 2010, 12:22

Besides the filesize and amount of elements limitations i would like to add this one:

It seems to me Sketchup becomes slower in time when doing a time consuming job

liam887 · 30 Jul 2010, 02:20

Do you mean the longer its running the slower it becomes? I haven't come across this problem before and I have had it running for days at a time using both MAC & PC versions, maybe its a hardware problem?

fester225 · 3 Aug 2010, 13:46

I'm not typically importing anything in SU, so I'll give you some numbers based on a mechanical drawing I'm doing.

I'm running SketchUp 7.1 under Linux/Ubuntu/CodeWeavers-CrossOver. My machine has 4Gb of memory, of which I'm using about 1/3rd. Video is 512Mb, and I have no idea how much of that memory is being used.

The file in question is 4.7Mb and was created entirely inside SU. At this point it has started losing entire layers spontaneously. I have no ideas how many faces it has. There are no textures. There are in excess of 20 layers.

michaliszissiou · 17 Aug 2010, 21:34

During the last two months, every time I visit this site I have to restart my rooter-modem. It blocks all my communication. This is the only site that this is happening. I'll stop visiting this, I hope you'll fix this soon. Not my fault as it is THE ONLY site that causes these problems.