Sketchup on Mac?

Slimdog

I find sketchup crashes just as much on the mac as the PC. The Paint bucket tool is much better on a PC. If you have 12gb of ram now I am thinking you will not see any faster performance with a new mac book pro. Not sure what the max up grade of ram is on the mac book pro but I am sure its no where near 12gb.

jeff hammond

@slimdog said:

Not sure what the max up grade of ram is on the mac book pro but I am sure its no where near 12gb.

it's 8gb max on the current mbp.

driven

@unknownuser said:

What is this John? iCloud?

I wasn't fast enough, so... what jeff, said...

On the Mac SU plus side,

I like having a second drawing open as a scratchpad,
where I can drag and drop tricky bits, get them to work,
then drag and drop them back to the original drawing... can you do this on a PC?

I find it's much quicker than having a 'construction' layer, and if it all goes tit's up you original is safe.

oh, and cmd/s seems to work during bug-splats, although not system freezes.

maybe we should start a thread of Mac SU +'s, it's usually only the problems in the forum.

john

Rich O Brien

@unknownuser said:

then drag and drop them back to the original drawing... can you do this on a PC?

You can copy and paste between open instances so it's basically the same....only better

Jean Lemire

Hi folks.

I received my new MacBook Pro (MBP) 17" about 10 days ago. It has 8 Gigs of RAM (the allowed max). I stayed with the 2.2 GHz clock speed since I though that 250 $ is too much to get 2.3 GHz instead. I also kepth the 750 Gig hard drive since the faster drive is only 500 Gig and SSD are still expensive. I installed SketchUp (SU) 8 Pro on this machine. It works very well and is fast. I suggest using a mouse with a scroll wheel for optimum performance. I use the wireless Mighty Mouse from my iMac with the MBP. Although the Magic Mouse can be enhanced with the MagicPrefs software, it do not give the same efficiency, IMHO. I have not really tried using the trackpad with SU.

A few days after receiving this machime, I installed Windows 7 Family Premium Edition in 64 bits mode using BootCamp. I then insalled SU 8 Pro for Windows. It works like a charm. It is like having two computers in the same box, very cool

Even more interesting, when using OS X, I can access the BootCamp partition and thus use the files created using Windows and, while in Windows, I can also access all the files on my Mac partition.

I have not tried any of the other sofwares that allows switching from one system to the other. I have to reboot if I want to switch system but it is relatively quick (less than a minute).

So far, this machine works beautifully. All the Mac hardware is useable in Windows.

Just ideas.

jason_maranto

Also worth mentioning is Layout (part of Sketchup Pro) has many nicer functions only available on the Mac version due to the nature of the Mac OS integrated color pickers (including CYMK) and typography tools.

For in Sketchup navigation I prefer the Space Navigator ( http://www.3dconnexion.com )

Best,
Jason.

jeff hammond

@unknownuser said:

@unknownuser said:

then drag and drop them back to the original drawing... can you do this on a PC?

You can copy and paste between open instances so it's basically the same....only better

well yeah, you can do that also.. (and is more typical of how i roll.. copy/paste in place)

fwiw, some other su mac only benefits/features.

-- this happens natively: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=22599
-- larger maximum texture export than 1024x1024 (even if you have use max texture size enabled)
-- osx runs 'large address aware' by design (ie- larger exports in general.. allows more ram to be used)
-- via a group's entity info, you can create a new layer and assign the group to that layer simply by typing in a new layer name
-- PDF support (easy importing/exporting of.. free version too)
-- CMYK images
-- none of that crazy toolbar nonsense
-- kern, ligature, baseline text support in layout
-- better keyboard shortcuts (ie- i can set up a keystroke to toggle on/off say the dynamic components window (may be possible on windows but i don't think so))
-- transparent png/tiff exports

probably forgetting a thing or two as well.
[besides the su developers apparently using macs as well.. kinda says something about which platform they prefer]

but, these are just little things.. all in all, the two platforms appear to be Very similar in terms of use and stability..
(re: stability.. i think most crashes are due to plugins so making some sort of legit mac vs. pc sketchup stability comparison seems unlikely.. )

but hey, when it comes down to it.. Macs are 4x faster than PCs!! you'd be dumb not to use one if real world productivity is part of your concerns..

[flash=640,505:1mw5ycaj]http://www.youtube.com/v/ZfQEsuc9bsw?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0[/flash:1mw5ycaj]

tfdesign

Another reason for getting a Mac, is that each Mac comes bundled with all these really cool Apple stickers, that will adhere to almost anything- including in your clapped out old motor's rear window, so when you drive down the road, at least you can hold warm in your heart that the other mean machine you drive in your life is solid silver and zips along at lightspeed!

Sorted!

Sent from my iPad

Aerilius

Good list, it makes it hard not to switch already this evening

I have a question, when I had the chance to work on a mac, I wasn't allowed to install applications (like SU), so I only know that Windows can't do the following:
When the SketchUp model is not the active window, because the materials/entities dialog or finder or web browser has focus, and you scroll over the SketchUp model, does it zoom (although it has no focus)?

jeff hammond

@aerilius said:

When the SketchUp model is not the active window, because the materials/entities dialog or finder or web browser has focus, and you scroll over the SketchUp model, does it zoom (although it has no focus)?

yeah, i have a su model peeking through the side of my browser window right now and i can zoom in/out without taking focus from safari..
i can also right click on geometry and the su context menu will pop up though i'm still in safari.. not much use for that but with rhino there is.
rhino uses the right mouse button for navigation so i can zoom and orbit a rhino model while keeping focus in another app.