SketchUp Problems

[Renaissance Man]

I am writing because I am nearing the end of my rope and desperately need help. I have spent a considerable amount of time verifying that my platform is properly configured , that I have the correct video drivers and the hardware, especially the drive is functioning correctly. I also know about the dreaded clipping and mathematical precision problem. BTW, it seems that expecting people to scale models that would normally use units in mm is unacceptable. Regarding the clipping problem. I have heard that OpenGL is being blamed for the clipping problems. I would point out there are a huge number of applications which use OpenGL and don't suffer from this problem. Applications should not require users to make these kinds of consessions just so the program works correctly.

Corrupted geometry: The geometry gets corrupted at the drop of a hat and the tools required to fix are not available. I am trying to skin a set of closed contours. The contour curves have been checked to ensure they have no breaks, overlaps, needle eyes, ultra short segments, etc. Merely selecting the curves breaks these curves so they are no longer continuous, necessitating they they be "welded" to restore them. Something is wrong here. Sketchup seems to ask frequently if it is ok to fix my model. In some cases I loose geometry and it is exceptionally hard to reconstruct, especially if it is located on the convex surface of an object. Anyone know what is going here? Overall, I keep kicking myself for buying this app. Things like these are killing me because experience has shown that it is faster to go back and rebuild certain parts of the model from scratch rather than to try and fix the damaged model.

Lost geometry: Quite a few times I have run into the situation where I will hide geometry and it disappears. I know the geometry is there, but there is no way I can find to make visible again. I have tried Unhide All, Selecting in the area where it is located, turning on X-Ray viewing model, turning on Hidden Lines, incantations to no avail. This seems really bad. Geometry inside a group cannot be seen (it is close enough, and big enough that it should been visible. The solution that I came up with is to export/import the file in .dwg format and immediately selecting the now visible geometry and I have the geometry back. Anyone know why this is happening?

Autosave: I am working with a 10 MB model. I frequently save my work in order to minimize the time lost when I get a Bug Splat. When I save the file using Ctrl-S, the save usually take about 2 seconds. However, when SketchUp autosave determines that the works needs to be saved, it takes several minutes to save the same file. Any ideas which this happens?

Bug Splats: This software is really unstable 5-10 Bug Splats per day. Not as many with initial release of 2014 as with recent update of 2014. I have done reinstalls of Windows, and SketchUp and have and crashes persist. I know in order to fix bugs you need screen shots, core dumps and files. I am happy to provide them. What are people using to capture screens so they can send in a better explanation of a particular problem? I use a number of design applications and I never have crash problems.

Any help that can be provided to the above would sincerely be appreciated.

[Trogluddite]

Welcome to the forum Renaissance Man,
Unfortunately, I can't answer all your questions, as it sounds like you are using SU for a very different purpose than I do. However here are some pointers for a couple of them.

Not being able to unhide your objects may be a matter of scope (you specifically mention groups). "Unhide All" is not properly named IMHO - "Unhide all in current context" would be more accurate. That is, if you hide an object which is within a group or component, you can only reveal it again it if you re-open the group/component for editing. Unfortunately, even the outliner does not highlight which groups/components currently contain hidden objects - it WILL indicate whole groups/components that are hidden, but not ungrouped geometry.
I may be wrong, but I have a feeling there is a plugin, or some kind of console command that can be used to do a proper recursive 'unhide all', so that may be worth searching out.

As to your problems with the broken contours - I don't know the answer, but I would recommend a quick post to say what the source of the data is. I say this because your problems sound very similar to those experienced by many people who import data from non-SU sources, where the kinds of entities in the file may not directly correspond to the kinds which Sketchup uses. Knowing where the data is from will ensure that you get the most appropriate answer.

@renaissance man said:

Applications should not require users to make these kinds of consessions just so the program works correctly.

Have to agree with you there. Sketchup's user interface is a gem, so much simpler than most other CAD packages - but I find myself using it less and less because of the need to constantly work around this stuff. I mostly to design very small objects for circuit boards, and as I work in the UK, use metric measures for everything (as do all but the USA, and two other countries in the entire world!!) - I don't believe you can honestly stick the label 'professional' on any design software that finds this so hard to handle!!

[xiombarg]

If there is one problem that Sketchup has as a truly viable software package it's that you have to find work-arounds for it's buggy weirdness. For more complex models using spline cages etc. I use MODO for it's brilliant sub-d integration, relatively low cost (compared to other "big" packages), and it has the best interface of any advanced 3D package. But that's a different discussion...

-If you can't "see" your geometry or things disappear, it's probably because the scale of the model is small and so when you try to do certain operations SU just makes the really small pieces disappear as if being unrecognizable. The easiest way to deal with the small geometry SU problem is to use the "boolean helper" plugin which really only does two things: it scales up and it scales back down again. Of course you can do this manually, but it's nice to have easy to use buttons that just do it for you.

-To get around camera clipping turn your perspective on (which will unset the clipping), then do a couple of operations, then turn perspective off again (if you don't like perspective on). I always have to do this periodically.

So without being able to see what your model is specifically, here is what I would recommend:
It sounds like you trying to build spline cages for skinning. For this type of operation SU isn't ideal, especially for complex models, but you can do it. First, don't try to skin the whole model in one go. Do it in pieces. In fact I would take pieces of the model and copy them into separate files, then after getting each piece to work, copy and paste the whole model and put it together. - I think SU gets confused when dealing with large groups of complex geometry and performing operations that it's not necessarily good at, but it seems to do better when dealing with smaller compact units and them putting them together. By separating these pieces you might also find where the real problems are.