Trimble & Sketchup 64 bit
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@thomthom said:
@pixero said:
If I want a renderer that runs inside SU without the need to export (like with Thea) can it still be 64bit?
Anything that runs inside SketchUp must be 32bit. But the 32bit process can send the data off to a 64bit process. You make the UI be hosted in SU's 32bit process, but make a 64bit background process do the rendering. Like the DR Spawner for instance - it receives the data, processes it, renders, and sends the resulting data back.
@pixero said:
If so, why haven't I've heard of any 3:rd part renderer for SU that works like that?
Don't know - can't answer that one. I could make a wild guess - that's it's easier to just run it inside, and it will work for most models.Just because something is possible doesn't make it easy.
so the whole proxy-thing will not be 64 bit? how that will work? i assumed that you can send heavy component to a 64 bit process.. maybe i misunderstood..
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What does that have to do with proxy components? (I'm myself not an expert, but I see us non-experts speculating and drifting away into technical topics which are better addressed by the people who make renderers).
Proxy replacements are probably done by the external renderer process and SketchUp is not involved (no matter whether 32bit/64bit). -
it is absoulutely not my intention to point up what renderer developers should do.
i know mr. doublethom went to see the vray presentation and they were talking about render plugins and memory management, so i know the proxy thing maybe a little off-topic, but i'm just very curious if this will be at least a first step toward an external 64bit rendering process or will still be 32 bit.
i'm not pretendig to be the next "bar-sport-developer" for sure. i'm just asking for information..
best regards
marcello -
@nickelessryan said:
So now I'm running a Dell Precision T1600 with Intel Xeon E31245 @3.3GHz with 8GB RAM.
We have the same Dells here and they do fine. What graphics card do you have in yours? I spec'd the 1GB Nvidia Quadro 600 in our T1600s.
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After reading this thread with great interest over the last week, the 64bit question seems quite emotive, perhaps because it in some way encapsulares the frustration which stems from uncertianty as to the direction Sketchup will take. A vague promise of an update sometime in 2013 does little to ease the dissonence.
Those more confident about a 32bit future seem quite defensive, moverover they also seem to be those closer to the development team, which in its own way can be taken as both reassuring and worrysome - i am sure the ambiguity is not lost on most. I get the distinct impression that for some this is a dicussion we are not meant to having.
Unlike some, I would place compatability and robustness above speed for Sketchup moving foward.
Apart from the discussion there are other indicators, the amount of advertising on here for render engines experesses the most obvious Sketchup functional shortfall, while the odd advertisement for Bonzai3d circles like a vulture awaiting either Sketchups demise or the fallout from all the uncertianty.
Perhaps a robust release of a Luxrender plugin and a plugin organizer as an interum update for both free and paid versions of Sketchup, together with a future roadmap for Sketchup would placate most, certainly me.
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Phillip - I think you're right on the money. With all the uncertainty and incomplete info about the future direction of SU, there is plenty of room for doomsaying and speculation. I guess real answers will only come with the next release of SU. But what is a forum for, but to wring one's collective hands and conjecture emotionally about the future
Andy
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After a 64 bit version released is before users moaning for a multi-threaded version... or high poly-count support... or NURBS modeling... or a Tux/iOS port or...
Also, having x32 and x64 versions doubles the expenditure for maintaining and releasing both versions for Win and OSX... as Free and Pro... and for currently 12 languages:
x32/64 * Win/OSX * Free/Pro * 12 langs = 96 builds (plus Viewer)
Having a 64 bit version only is, with lots of 32 bit Windows still in the field, not feasible, at least in the short term.
jm2cts,
Norbert -
@phillip said:
After reading this thread with great interest over the last week, the 64bit question seems quite emotive, perhaps because it in some way encapsulares the frustration which stems from uncertianty as to the direction Sketchup will take. A vague promise of an update sometime in 2013 does little to ease the dissonence.
Those more confident about a 32bit future seem quite defensive, moverover they also seem to be those closer to the development team, which in its own way can be taken as both reassuring and worrysome - i am sure the ambiguity is not lost on most. I get the distinct impression that for some this is a dicussion we are not meant to having.
Unlike some, I would place compatability and robustness above speed for Sketchup moving foward.
Apart from the discussion there are other indicators, the amount of advertising on here for render engines experesses the most obvious Sketchup functional shortfall, while the odd advertisement for Bonzai3d circles like a vulture awaiting either Sketchups demise or the fallout from all the uncertianty.
Perhaps a robust release of a Luxrender plugin and a plugin organizer as an interum update for both free and paid versions of Sketchup, together with a future roadmap for Sketchup would placate most, certainly me.
I was all in on your post till Bonzai3D, they haven't updated that producy at all in years!
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Probably the deciding factor for SU going 64bit will probably be when Windows comes in only 64bit versions. There's been talk about for a while - some time back it was talked about Windows 8 being only 64bit - but it got postponed.
These 64bit (and multicore) discussions always goes astray - so I'll just repeat one thing: 64bit doesn't make thinks go faster! (It appear to be a common misconception)
And to reiterate Andreas; we're better off asking for the end result instead of getting blind on a guess to what technical solution might achieve that result. Just look at this thread - full of speculations and guesses. Brings us nowhere.
@sketch3d.de said:
Also, having x32 and x64 versions doubles the expenditure for maintaining and releasing
Aye - a pure 64bit release of SU might save development time for new projects - but at the expense of existing products. -
@phillip said:
Those more confident about a 32bit future seem quite defensive, moverover they also seem to be those closer to the development team, which in its own way can be taken as both reassuring and worrysome - i am sure the ambiguity is not lost on most. I get the distinct impression that for some this is a dicussion we are not meant to having.
It's just that for the most of it, the 64bit topic is brought up on the incorrect assumption that it will solve all of SketchUp's problems.
Concrete highlighting of the actual issue is better: Explode is way too slow. Better animation of scenes. More performance to build larger models. (This they (the team) have announced that they're always committed to - but it's an everlasting arms race.)
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I'm also working on a 64bit windows 7 installations on several different computers with different hardware. In some instances I've experienced instability in sketchup that makes the software unusable. It will constantly crash for seemingly random reasons though most commonly when processing polygons such as when exploding a group or when running a plugin that creates polygons. It also tends to do massive amounts of lag when running autosave or when opening files of any size.
Through trial and error I've found that the issue is not directly Sketchup but something to do with multi-core processors on certain motherboards. It may be the bridge or threading technology integrated into the board that's at issue. I've only had this problem on boards using DDR3 PC1333 Ram and Intel processors but the ram and processors involved may or may not be a coincidence.
Generally I've solved this issue on my machines by going into the Windows Task manager, showing processes from all users, finding the sketchup process, right clicking on it and selecting "set affinity" and chosing a single core for processing. This effectively eliminates multi-core processing but Sketchup didn't multi-thread anyway. it means my system specs are over kill for sketchup but it makes sketchup at least usable in the environment. -
Hi dynath:
On the basis of your comment- and my interpretation of it, what would you say would be an effective permanent solution? You have just suggested 3 possible players in this scenario. Windows, Intel, and Sketchup.
You had to take the extra effort to isolate a work around, and I believe this sort of thing could(should) automatically resolve itself by one of the three entities mentioned. Or, all three could implement a resolution.
Thanks for your insights. -
There was similar issue with Painter 12 when it was released and I came up with the same solution (manually set affinity) -- eventually they released a patch that allowed the user to specify the number of cores used in the preferences.
This is something that should be trivial for SketchUp to do.
Best,
Jason. -
Phew - this is doing the rounds everywhere I look! Been on the look out for how to upgrade our current studio machines to maximize performance on our core apps and Sketchup seems to be a constant block to any possible improvements. We use SU, Max 13, Adobe Creative Suite 5. The GPUs Im looking at are EITHER best for use with Max, (Nvidia) OR SU (AMD). I should point out that this is just what I have found as there is no official line from Trimble / Google / Sketchup / Developers on GPUs. Multi core is better for Max (rendering) and all of the creative suite as is 64bit but SU prefers single core and 32 bit. Its impossible to bring these two into line and its very frustrating that such a fantastic product as SU should make it so difficult to move forward and take advantage of advances in new tech.
I get that currently 64bit may not be faster and that SU only takes advantage of a single core (as does Max when modelling) but it isn't practical to expect people to have to run one older single core 32bit set up for SU and a newer 64bit multicore setup for everything else. Taking advantage of 64bit, multi core machines is the direction that everything seems to be moving in ..... except Sketchup.Ive searched extensively for several weeks now looking for the best spec upgrades of new PC to enable our studio to work with SU and the other packages that are an essential part of my (and many others) working day / night / weekend and have so far come up with nothing. The requirements of SU seem to conflict with everything else!
For me , SU runs pretty well (some occasional crashes and stalls) but I know if I had an older 32bit single core machine it would be blazing! LO's performance quite frankly, is shocking when you hold it up to any other CAD drafting package and there is so little documentation to help me to make an informed choice on what to do to fix it!
The frustration for me is that ther seems to be a lot of speculation, missing or bad information regarding CPU and GPUs for SU and there is practically NOTHING for LO and as someone pointed out earlier there is no development path outlined anywhere so its impossible to know what direction SU will be going in and whether LO will see any (sadly lacking) development. Can't find anything to tell me if any of the upgrades Im hoping to make will have any effect on LO, and it now seems I will have to split my work between two machines to see any perofmance improvement.
The info in this page
http://support.google.com/sketchup/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=36208
is useful but there is no referene to-
single core 2+ GHz processor being better than multi - what speed multi is good as most other packages need 64bit multi to work efficiently?!?!
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2+ GB RAM - I have 6GB ram - is it worth getting more?
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3D class Video Card with 512+ MB of memory or higher. Please ensure that the video card driver supports OpenGL version 1.5 or higher and up to date - any other recommendations on this would be useful as upgrading GPUs for all our machines is a considerable cost, what works and what doesnt?!
I bit more information from Trimble to the interested and eager SU community at large would go a long way to keep people sweet and reassure them that SU will be moving in a positive direction.
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@samyell said:
but it isn't practical to expect people to have to run one older single core 32bit set up for SU and a newer 64bit multicore setup for everything else.
But you don't need to have a separate setup for SU... 64bit multi-core runs SketchUp without problems. You get quad cores that are 3-4GHz these days for a decent price. No need to choose between a faster single core or multicore - because CPU's doesn't really run any faster than 3-4GHz anyway.
@samyell said:
Taking advantage of 64bit, multi core machines is the direction that everything seems to be moving in ..... except Sketchup.
As you mentioned, the other 3d packages that use multi-core use the multiple cores for rendering. SketchUp doesn't have a rendering engine like they do. The render plugins we plug into SketchUp makes use of it though - so the net result is the same.
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Once upon a time Layout supported multi-core, but due to problems this was dropped and I don't believe it was ever fixed/reinstated... this to me is absurd because Layout is very much a render engine.
I wonder how long the user base will accept the "it's too hard"/"we don't have the resources" excuses... I mean really, after observing the situation for the last several versions, I think that if all the time and energy put into making excuses for why we can't have/shouldn't want these things was instead routed into coding work we would have a vastly superior product... instead we got alot of lip service.
Google is gone, time for talk is done -- it's results we need now... and not more "kinda fixed" solutions like the toolbars joke.
Best,
Jason. -
@jason_maranto said:
Once upon a time Layout supported multi-core, but due to problems this was dropped and I don't believe it was ever fixed/reinstated... this to me is absurd because Layout is very much a render engine.
Layout wasn't getting much love fro Google. Things are changing under Trimble.
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@thomthom said:
Layout wasn't getting much love fro Google. Things are changing under Trimble.
I consider that to be most excellent news
Best,
Jason. -
@jason_maranto said:
I wonder how long the user base will accept the "it's too hard"/"we don't have the resources" excuses...
Actually, what you're getting from us is a clear discussion of the technological reality of 64-bit computing. Unfortunately, that reality does not match your expectation of the benefit that 64-bit computing should bring.
This is a topic that appears to defy rational discussion. That said, I will continue to argue rationally for real and appropriate performance improvements in SketchUp
john
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