Large Model Lag: Is it my storage setup or just SketchUp limits?
-
Hi everyone, long-time lurker but first-time poster here!
I’ve been working on a pretty extensive urban planning model in SketchUp recently (lots of imported components, high-poly vegetation, you know the drill). The file size has ballooned to over 600MB, and I’m starting to experience significant lag, especially during auto-saves or when reloading components.
I recently upgraded my workstation to try and combat this. I’m running a decent CPU and GPU, but my storage setup is a bit unique. I repurposed an older enterprise workstation, so I’m running my drives through an HBA & Controllers SAS Controller Smart Array setup rather than direct NVMe on the motherboard. It’s great for redundancy and massive storage capacity for my texture libraries, but I’m wondering if the seek times or throughput on this older controller architecture might be creating a bottleneck for SketchUp’s specific way of handling temp files and caching.
Has anyone else here tried running heavy SketchUp models off of enterprise-grade storage controllers? I’ve noticed the lag is worst when the "Saving..." progress bar pops up. Is SketchUp particularly sensitive to storage latency compared to raw throughput? I’m debating whether I should just move my active project files to a simple local SSD to see if that helps, or if I’m just hitting the polygon ceiling of the software itself.
Any insights on optimizing storage specifically for large SketchUp files would be super appreciated! -
@lodiv76505 said in Large Model Lag: Is it my storage setup or just SketchUp limits?:
Has anyone else here tried running heavy SketchUp models off of enterprise-grade storage controllers?
No experience with that setup but it is pretty easy prove if that is the issue by implementing the test you suggest.
SketchUp can be quite slowly saving heavy files and with auto-save enabled you encounter those 'freezes' regularly.
SketchUp itself 'packs' all assets into file at save time. That makes it a more portable file format but it comes with file size issues.
-
There are many examples in which SketchUp files, especially larger ones, have been fatally corrupted when they've been saved directly to an external drive location. In many cases the data winds up being replaced with zeroes. Often all of the data is replaced with zeroes.
The general adice is to work on the file while it is saved directly to an internal drive. If you need the file to be on a server drive or out in the cloud, copy it to that location after a successful save to the internal drive.
Also, you should be regularly purging unused content from your models, keeping material file sizes reasonable, and keeping polygon counts under control.
Advertisement