SketchUp 8 unusably slow?
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I'm currently using a 2.66GHZ dual core MacBook Pro with 4GB Ram, running OSX Lion. I've used SketchUp on this machine for several years and never had a problem until the latest model of a building i've produced, in SketchUp 8, which i recently upgraded to. It's not a particularly complex model and i've produced more elaborate things in the past which has been fine.
SketchUp has become unusably slow, it literally won't do anything without the rainbow ball of doom appearing. I've tried everything; deleting all the plugins, restarting, using a new file, running just SketchUp. I've been trying to work on this project for a week now and have to retort SketchUp every 5 minutes because it stops responding, which is becoming infuriating.
I think i'm going to install SketchUp 7 again and see if that helps things. Can anyone think of what might be causing this? All other programs (Adobe stuff, various CAD applications, rendering engines etc.) are running fine. Layout also has the same problem if that's relevant.
Any help appreciated.
EDIT: I've just installed SketchUp 7, exactly the same problem which i didn't expect as that always ran fine...
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Hi Lewis, hi folks.
What is different between this building and others that you have previously made?
Even a small file may contains a lot of geometries that can bring SketchUp (SU) to its knees, even on a powerfull machine.
Do you use shadows ?
Do you have a lot of heavy components like 3D trees ?
Do you use endpoints emphasis and extensions and sketchy edges, etc ?
Do you use Profiles ?
Do you use Shaded with textures instead of shaded with a lot of complex texture ?
Using any of these or, worse, all of them is a sure way of taxing SU rendering engine.
The trick I used for a model that was slowing my computer too much to my liking was to add two scenes. One that I called "Work" and another that I called "Render". Scenes are usefull to memorise setups.
In my "Work" scene I put shadows off, profiles off, use shaded mode, turned off a few layers containing unnecessary stuff like trees, cars and peoples. In short, I tried using a very minimalist rendering scheme to reduce as much as possible the workload on the rendering engine and the graphic processor.
In my "Render" scene, on the contrary, I set everything to on and used shaded with textures, show every layers, etc. to really get the best possible image.
This gives me two modes, a mimalist render which allows me to navigate the model quickly and fluidly and a full render which allows me to see the model in all its full glory. I just need to click on the appropriate scene tab to switch from one to the other.
For both scenes, I unchecked the memorisation of the camera location to avoid loosing a carefully orbited, panned and zoomed view when switching from one mode to another.
Just ideas.
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It also might be worth turning on Hidden Geometry and having a look. I had a file like this recently, and there was some unidentifiable weird geometry hidden. I was able to delete it and things improved considerably.
Also if you have things set up in Layers, try turning on individual layers and seeing how SketchUp responds. It may lead to the problem.
Good Luck -
Also large images [or textures using large image files] can slow you up.
Also geometry that is miles from the origin can cause issues too, as can imported objects with their insertion points miles from their main geometry [even when that geometry is nicely located otherwise].
Assume you've used 'Model Info'>'Statistics' and used 'Purged Unused' and also used its 'Fix Problems' button... -
Is it just the one model?
The file size doesn't say much about the file. Anything can eat up filesize - textures, images, background photos etc. You can have a model with lots of geometry with a small file size.
What does the Model Info statistics say? How many faces, edges, groups and components?
Have you enabled Shadows? Edge Colour? Edge Profiles or other style effects? What is the transparency quality?
More info, screenshots, sample models will let us make a more qualified answer rather than pure guessing.
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I had a similar problem today. My model is getting very complex and I noticed some serious lag when rotating and moving around. But then I discovered that for some reason Sketchup was not using hardware accelleratio in the preferences menu. I put it back to hardware accelleration and I have no more lag. I'm using windows though so not sure if this helps.
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Im late in the convo here, but have had some issues with performance lately.
The thing I don't get, is that it doesn't seem necessarily tied to the complexity of my model - I have a model helicopter with pretty hi-res Subdivide and Smooth canopy parts and tons of complexity, and it will load, orbit, etc. just fine sometimes.
Other times, I get unusable levels of lag on models that aren't all that complex.
If anyone knows much about optimizing SU performance WRT video cards, processors, etc. I could use some info on this.
My work computer is a 3.5Ghz I-7, and SU8 tends to slow WAY down when I have other CAD programs open. Otherwise, it seems to run fine...so maybe its a processor load issue?
The IT guy at my office told me the video cards that are best for CAD vs. Gaming systems are different...If anyone can explain this, I would be grateful.
Thanks
WTF
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I didn't have my hardware acceleration checked in my Preferences -> Open GL ->
This seems to have completely solved the problem. Good feels.
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doesnt work for me....small file 14 mb, stilll dragging.
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