Layout pages displaying slow.
-
Forgive me if this has been asked and answered.
I took the plunge and forced myself to design a project in SketchUp. It's quite complicated with component parts that have to be made by various Mfg, I'E. Welder, CNC cutting, mill-worker, sign shop etc.
The file is 37 MB and contains everything including the nuts and bolts and screws & graphics etc.
My challenge seems to be that every time I update the model and then go into layout to set up the views, layout crawls terribly along while switching through the pages. I have 15 pages so far with various styles. One thing I've noticed is that once I've accessed the page and it has updated they seem to switch back and forth quite nicely. But it's cumbersome until I've opened each page in layout at least once per session. Each page might take 1 - 2 minutes to display once i've selected it from the pages menu.
I doubt this is a system thing. I have dual graphics card, 20gb of RAM, 500 GB SSD HD yada yada.
Any Idea's?
-
When you update the SketchUp reference every viewport tied to that SketchUp file has to be re-rendered. The rendering for the viewports doesn't start until you try to go to the page they are on. Once they are rendered, though, accessing the page is fast. Actually rendering in LO2014 is amazingly fast compared to that in previous versions. If you untick Auto Render, the viewports won't get rendered until you choose to render them. If you find you are frequently going back and forth between SU and LO and making changes you might find it makes sense to turn Auto Render off and only update the viewport(s) you need to update. Eventually you'll have to do them all, though.
There are things you can do to help reduce rendering times even further. Make sure you are using scenes in SU for each viewport in LO and make sure that you don't change the viewports so they show as modified in the SketchUp inspector window. Make sure your model is as clean as possible without a whole bunch of unneeded geometry. Use Layers in SU to control visibility of entities in the scenes. If you can't see it in the scene, its layer should be turned off.
You might also consider substituting some components with lower detail proxies when possible. If you're showing bolts with nuts on them, do the nuts have threads? If so, you're just causing LO to work harder to render edges that can't be seen anyway. Maybe you don't need entire bolts if only the heads are visible. Swap out the bolts and put in just heads.
Give those things a try and see how you get on.
-
Thanks,
I definitely have some learning to do with layout. And yes I probably flip back and forth too much and should just spend more time in the model and only do the layout once. Sadly I have a bad habit of having layout open on my second monitor and I am always updating my pages to see the changes.
I am using scenes in the model ( I have about 40 so far) for the component parts and that is working well. I like the tip about making sure the scene in layout matches the scene in Sketch up. I did do a few view edits within layout itself so I've fixed that all up. As to the detail of the parts I have no threads on my nuts and bolts but I do have some casters in the model that came in from STL files. These I cleaned up using cleanUp3 plug in which works so well I am definitely buying ThomThom a few beers. I've kept the model very clean throughout and purged all the unused stuff as I went along.
Thanks for your reply. I am an Autocad guy and I am loving this program except for the layer controls and doing dimensions in Layout (Rad / Dia. etc.) is very limited. Better layer controls and a better dimensions pallet would really be a good idea.
Next stop - exporting 2d dxf's to send to the CNC . . . I hope that's not as cumbersome as I am beginning to think it might be
Cheers.
P
-
Peter, I'm happy if all that helps.
Cleaning up models is a good idea. Especially so if they come from other sources. I do some tutoring work with a fellow who has had numerous issues with LayOut. It looks like it has locked up for him when rendering viewports. Really LO was just chugging along doing what it was asked to do. In every case the problems have been found to be due to components he's downloaded from the 3D Warehouse to use in his models. The common offenders are kitchen appliances. He's managed to find components such as ovens and refrigerators that include geometry for all the internal workings. For his application and I suspect for most who would want to use these components, they only need the exterior skins and don't really care about having a compressor or condensation coil. Of course LO has to look at all that unneeded geometry and decide what to do with it. It used to be for Vector and Hybrid rendering it would iterate through every edge. Now, with LO2014, it can decide what not to render which speeds things up but it still has to go through everything to decide.
As I said in my previous post, get rid of geometry that doesn't add value to the model. So for your casters, since you are probably going to buy them already made, they don't need axles and the wheels don't need a central hole. I've seen caster models that include bearings with all the tiny little balls. That's a waste unless you're making construction drawings for the caster.
I suggested to my friend that he take a little time to gut the appliance components to get rid of needless details. doing so seems to have been a big help in reducing the time he waits for LO to render viewports.
Some of that seems like a lot of work and for some components from other sources, it might be more work to clean them up than to draw your own from scratch but the cleaner you keep your models, the easier they are to work with and it pays off big.
Buy Thomas a cookie or two as well as those beers. Last time I saw him he was looking rather underfed.
-
Dave's tips for efficient model building are spot on. If you still find yourself chugging a bit too much, don't forget the document setup options for editing and output.
Advertisement