SketchUp 2015 is 64bit

JonFar · 5 Nov 2014, 17:50

yes, of course...

Gigabyte F2A88XM-DS2
AMD A10-5800k (quadcore at stock speed 3.8ghz and turbo at 4.1ghz)
Radeon HD 7660D (part of the APU, with 720mb)
2x GSKILL PC3-17000 CL11 (8Gb in dual-channel @ 2133mhz)
WD CAVIAR BLUE 7200RPM 16MB SATA III
CORSAIR VS 450W

i know its not a high end system, but i shouldnt have any navigation lag with that 47mb model with less than 2000 edges...
and whats strange is that i get the navigation lag and my system is almost running idle, with only one core working full speed and a fraction of the ram being used

i thought it was a 32bit issue, but its exactly the same with SU 2015
(oh, and every other app like C4D or AutoCAD work fine, both 64bit of course)

here is the model info

mcpcorey · 5 Nov 2014, 18:01

Hey Guys, I am trying out 2015 here. I have not yet loaded any of my plug-ins yet, because I notice right away that my 3DConnexion Space Mouse Pro, will not yet work in SU 2015. (never realized how dependent I had become on it, until I tried to work without it!)
I reloaded the most recent drivers, but no improvement for 2015, still works fine in 2014!.
I would guess that 3DXware needs a driver update to be compatible with 2015 and the 64 bit application?
I did send a note / tech request this morning to 3DConnexion regarding this.
Has anyone had success with a 3DConnexion device in SU2015 ?

Corey

jeff hammond · 5 Nov 2014, 18:07

@jonfar said:

here is the model info
[attachment=0:26eb8lrv]2.jpg[/attachment:26eb8lrv]

click the box 'show nested components'

I'm thinking the model is in the hundreds of thousands entities range.

JonFar · 5 Nov 2014, 18:12

sorry, forgot to do that..

you are right, as always
but even so, i thing its strange that i get this navigation lag with my system running idle... shouldnt it be using all 4 cores and a bit more RAM than the 2014 SU?

kaas · 5 Nov 2014, 18:20

600k edges and 300k faces might be too much for embedded gfx? Ever tried putting a gfx-card in your system? The fact SU is now 64 bits doesn't mean it will use more than 1 core. That's something totally different.

jeff hammond · 5 Nov 2014, 18:22

@jonfar said:

sorry, forgot to do that..

[attachment=0:2mjb4eyu]3.jpg[/attachment:2mjb4eyu]

you are right, as always
but even so, i thing its strange that i get this navigation lag with my system running idle... shouldnt it be using all 4 cores and a bit more RAM than the 2014 SU?

fwiw, your model is what i personally consider 'a huge sketchup model'.

i don't think ram has anything to do with navigation speed.. (well, i imagine it's part of the process.. just that the ram provided with 32bit is plenty to keep up with the other calculations which must occur.. as in- the available ram of an average computer was never a bottleneck in the navigation speed)

re: multicore.
should it be using all 4 cores? i really don't know.. up til a few weeks ago, i've always thought a program couldn't use more than one core for things like navigation/redraw..

but it appears michael gibson of MOI3D has found a way..

MoI, 3D modeling for designers and artists

MoI is a new 3D Modeling/CAD application for designers and artists. Offering a blend of precision and freeform NURBS drawing tools, it sports a unique user interface that operates seamlessly with a pen tablet.

(moi3d.com)

@unknownuser said:

Multiple CPU cores are now used in the draw engine, typical display speed-up of around 2x to 3x on complex models.

JonFar · 5 Nov 2014, 18:34

hmmmm i see...
so my navigation lag is due to my system being an APU? if that's a GPU issue, i can understand
and i will look into that michael gibson's findings

sorry for clogging this thread with my issues, i just wasnt understanding why you guys had such great improvement in performance and i didnt...
i guess i need to invest in a more powerfull machine

thanks guys for your help and patience

Dave R · 5 Nov 2014, 18:37

@mcpcorey said:

... because I notice right away that my 3DConnexion Space Mouse Pro, will not yet work in SU 2015.

This has already been covered. They are working on an updated driver package. Check the manufacturer's site.

mcpcorey · 5 Nov 2014, 18:55

@dave r said:

@mcpcorey said:

... because I notice right away that my 3DConnexion Space Mouse Pro, will not yet work in SU 2015.

This has already been covered. They are working on an updated driver package. Check the manufacturer's site.

Thanks Dave, That is what I suspected, (I knew you would have that answer)
I missed where it has already been covered, and I cannot find any reference to it at their web site.

jeff hammond · 5 Nov 2014, 18:57

@jonfar said:

hmmmm i see...
so my navigation lag is due to my system being an APU? if that's a GPU issue, i can understand
and i will look into that michael gibson's findings

sorry for clogging this thread with my issues, i just wasnt understanding why you guys had such great improvement in performance and i didnt...
i guess i need to invest in a more powerfull machine

thanks guys for your help and patience

well, nobody's machine, no matter how good or expensive, is going to run that model much(if any) better than you're seeing.

I'm not sure how 3.8ghz AMD translates to intel clock speed but I assume it's decently fast.. you just can't buy faster processors. they're not available.. but sketchup was written at a time when clock speed was doubling every couple of years so for a while, you could upgrade your hardware and get noticeable performance gains in sketchup.. that quit around 6-7 years ago.

jeff hammond · 5 Nov 2014, 19:08

I'll also add..

you have to be weary when hearing 64bit sketchup has improved performance.

while "the new 64bit version of sketchup is faster than the previous versions" may be a true statement, it doesn't mean 64bit is the reason for the increase in performance. there are other (code) optimizations which happen with (nearly) every release which improves performance.

thing is, the team hasn't come across the magic bullet which makes performance gains incredibly noticeable. (ie.. 500,000 model now performs like it were a 50,000 entity model).. not sure if they'll ever be able to do that or if it's even possible to begin with.

JonFar · 5 Nov 2014, 19:22

maybe my models make my judgement biased, because i always work with those "huge" files, and just switch off layers or hide stuff so that i can navigate better

i cant hide my dissapointment, cause when i saw "Sketchup 64bits" i thought i was gonna be able to work with high poly trees and objects like i do with C4D

but dont get me wrong, i am very pleased with this new version of SU, it has many other great new features, and its way faster opening, saving, exploding, move-copy, etc

Dan Rathbun · 5 Nov 2014, 19:26

@al hart said:

The SketchUp description of 64 bit says: "The exception to this 32-bit status is that SketchUp for Windows has been built with an exception to allow 64-bit memory usage which allows SketchUp to use more than 4 Gb of RAM."

Attention Required! | Cloudflare

(help.sketchup.com)

DO you think the second use of the word exception is a mistake, or do you think SketchUp found a way to create a "pseudo" 64-bit - which uses more memory, but isn't really recompiled for 64 bits?

Ignoring the fact that this refers to SU2013 & 2014...

... I agree with Al. The second instance of "an exception" should be replaced with "a compiler directive" ...

Regarding the link from the 2015 "What's New" page. It should have a anchor added to the URL such that:

http://help.sketchup.com/en/article/3000069#SketchUp%202015

will select the correct content.

Dave R · 5 Nov 2014, 19:29

@jonfar said:

maybe my models make my judgement biased, because i always work with those "huge" files, and just switch off layers or hide stuff so that i can navigate better

i cant hide my dissapointment, cause when i saw "Sketchup 64bits" i thought i was gonna be able to work with high poly trees and objects like i do with C4D

but dont get me wrong, i am very pleased with this new version of SU, it has many other great new features, and its way faster opening, saving, exploding, move-copy, etc

It has been brought up many times since it was first requested that making SketchUp a 64-bit application wouldn't have any impact on the performance issues as you're expecting. As Jeff pointed out, there were code optimizations that do improve performance but on very large, very high poly models, the difference might not be that noticeable because were aren't talking orders of magnitude increases.

Box · 5 Nov 2014, 19:42

Plus a lot has to do with your Graphic card, which I mentioned in this post http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10%26amp;t=59650#p543129

numerobis · 5 Nov 2014, 19:42

Ok i have installed it now in tried a 212MB file with 3.2M edges and 4500 components and i can see a big improvement in load and save times :
v8: loading 1min31sec / saving 5min28sec
v2015: loading 21sec / saving 54sec
(without scene thumbs)
Duplicating geometry (3M edges) in this scene is slower for me in v2015 : ~52sec vs ~40sec in v8
Shadow rendering is much faster! Navigation without shadows is not noticeable faster, but runs fluently in both versions.

another scene (198MB - 1M edges - 600 comp definitions, 4600 instances, 1300 groups)
v8: loading 1min39sec / saving 4min1sec
v2015: loading 9sec / saving 18sec (!)

(i7 3930K@4.7GHz, GTX 560 TI 2GB)

So thank you for this update!

But copying geometry could be improved...

AndrewS · 5 Nov 2014, 22:13

@al hart said:

Thanks Andrew - I had seen the warning - but still I assumed I was in the right place, since I had gotten there by clicking on the link in the SketchUp 2015 What's new article.

Al,

We're pretty excited about how the new knowledge/help center allows us to post different articles for each SketchUp version all under one heading, but the events of this week have also made us aware of how it still needs to be improved. At present, we use a cookie to decide which version of content to show you by default. I don't remember how that cookie gets set, but it's essentially created the first time you come to our help site and indicate which version of SketchUp you're using. The problem becomes trying to understand under what circumstances to change the cookie to reflect a new version. We hope to come up with something better one of these days.

Andrew

AndrewS · 5 Nov 2014, 22:31

@jonfar said:

when i saw "Sketchup 64bits" i thought i was gonna be able to work with high poly trees and objects like i do with C4D

We worked for YEARS to dispel the notion that 64-bit SketchUp == faster or more cores. If you go back and read everything our team said about 64-bit migration years ago, the theme was essentially, "by and large, people don't need 64-bit; it's not going to get you anything--unless you do activities that cause you to exhaust your memory, like rendering." We beat that drum over and over and over, but people didn't listen. Now we provided 64-bit and it works exactly like we said it would and people are surprised.

Take that thought a little further and consider the atmosphere of us discussing this in the planning meetings over the last few years. Someone says, "Hey, guys, I've got an idea! Let's devote the entire engineering team for months on end to implementing a 64-bit SketchUp. What it gets us is something that 98% of our customers don't need, and it'll completely tie up our team to the point where we'll be able to implement precious little else during the major development cycle, but we should totally do it. Because...64-bit!!!"

We only managed to convince ourselves to do this once we got to the point where a) more of our users started to be affected, b) we could be sure we wouldn't need to support 32-bit on Mac anymore, c) we had enough momentum on this to get it done a little faster than we thought, and d) the rest of the SketchUp core got to high enough performance that we could actually leverage additional memory in a usable way (in the past, SketchUp would often fall to its knees for other reasons before exhausting memory).

Nevertheless, here we are. 64-bit SketchUp. Everything you wanted, but not what most people needed.

Andrew

jeff hammond · 5 Nov 2014, 22:43

@andrews said:

the rest of the SketchUp core got to high enough performance that we could actually leverage additional memory in a usable way (in the past, SketchUp would often fall to its knees for other reasons before exhausting memory).

aww.. i started reading that as the rest of the sketchUp core team got too high to....

was hoping for something a bit more gossipy
: )

JonFar · 5 Nov 2014, 22:49

Andrew,

by all means, dont take my posts as criticism
i am just another tipical user, without IT knowledge, who thought 64bits = better performance

when i say that im dissapointed, its not dissapointed at SU 2015 and your team... not at all!! the new version has great new features that will help us a lot!

im dissaponted to find out that 64bits is not the magical powder that makes software run faster...

keep up the good work, cause we'll always be here to demand more and more in each new version