Bad component! Smack with rolled newspaper.
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SU6.4.112 Pro; on Win XP; 2.8mhz Pentium; nVIDIA Quadro FX 3000, 256 mb VRAM; 2.5gb RAM
I have just experienced a serious performance problem, and I would like to be able to avoid wasting a lot of time in the future. Performance has been normal until recently.
In an almost complete 7.6mb house model, after a reboot, and no other programs running:
- I select a component on the active layer---just one of dozens on the Site Layer---trees, shrubs, etc.
- The CPU usage shoots up to 50% (which I assume is the max allocated). Normally CPU would go up to 10 - 20% for one component.
- After a couple of seconds delay, the screen goes white.
- After a few more seconds, the screen redraws, and the yellow selection box appears---or sometimes no change.
This happens as I select each component. So I slowly and laboriously---including a couple of complete lockups---reassigned each Site-related component to an inactive layer.
My guess is that at least one of the components has a glitch that destabilizes the system, and affects the selection of other components. But how can I tell which one it is? And what the problem is? Some of them were downloaded from 3DW.
While I wait for some more experienced insight, I will go thru the suspect layer and see if I can find the culprit.
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The semi-lock-ups continue. Each time it stops responding, I have just turned-on Render mode and Shadows, so it's hard to find what's at fault. During the lock-up the screen goes white and then eventually redraws, and looks normal, except I can't select or deselect anything. The object that is currently selected is a Sandbox contour.
I just discovered under Model Info / Statistics / Only Components a <<Fix Problems>> button. When I click it, VALIDITY CHECK says "no problems found". I knew it couldn't be that easy.
Off-topic: when I render the scene in preparation to send it to Layout, the dotted polygon lines still appear. I thought they were supposed to turn-off in Render mode. How can I make them go away?
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Have you updated your operating system lately? A recent security update screwed up the software on my machine. It became noticeable when I tried to work on a large Sketchup model. The IT manager is currently sorting out the errors and so I cannot tell you if the update affected SU or that something else is wrong (possibly with the model). I didn't get the errors you reported, but quite a few functions (and specifically plugins) stopped working. Strangely enough, If I opened a new template and tried drawing then everything seemed to work okay. The big model works okay on my laptop and so I think it is something specific to the update.
Regards,
Bob -
What happens if you turn off your Site layer? Do you have many 3D plant components? What does your statistics window say about the edge and face count when you have "Entire model" and "Show nested components" selected? Are shadows on?
A more than 7 Mb model is big, especially if it comprises a lot of components. And whatever your system, most of the work is carried out by the CPU, with not much help from multiple CPU cores.
Anssi
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The photographic image tree component is still acting squirrelly, but that doesn't seem to be the cause of the lockups.
Apparently the lockup problem has more to do with turning on <<Display Shadows>> than with the Site layer & multiple landscape components. If I check <<use sun for shading>> no problem. I would expect the shadow rendering to slow down, but not to lockup the computer. I have a dual-core Pentium and 2.5GB of memory, so 7MB file shouldn't be too big. I typically work with much larger 2D files in CAD. Normally SU.exe uses about 30mb of memory, but during rendering with shadows, it jumps up to 140mb and 50% of CPU time.
Even though this is a special CAD video card, I have <<Hardware Acceleration>> turned off, because it has caused lockup & crashing problems in both 2D CAD and in SketchUp. It would be nice if the OpenGL hardware would work as advertised.
The lockup seems to be interfering with redrawing the screen and returning control to the application. I've tried some custom 3D settings for SketchUp, but so far no luck.
Does SU plan to use multiple core processors in the next release?
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@jhearcht said:
Apparently the lockup problem has more to do with turning on <<Display Shadows>> than with the Site layer & multiple landscape components. If I check <<use sun for shading>> no problem. I would expect the shadow rendering to slow down, but not to lockup the computer. I have a dual-core Pentium and 2.5GB of memory, so 7MB file shouldn't be too big. I typically work with much larger 2D files in CAD. Normally SU.exe uses about 30mb of memory, but during rendering with shadows, it jumps up to 140mb and 50% of CPU time.
Even though this is a special CAD video card, I have <<Hardware Acceleration>> turned off, because it has caused lockup & crashing problems in both 2D CAD and in SketchUp. It would be nice if the OpenGL hardware would work as advertised.
A model as big as this would be behaving quite as expected if turning shadows on with Hardware Acceleration off slows down the system to a crawl. Real-time shadows in SU are an OpenGL feature that is very much affected by the performance of your graphics card. Turning off Hardware Acceleration means that SU uses only the CPU to draw things on the screen, bypassing the graphics card.
The QuadroFX series of cards have generally performed well with SU. So if your hardware is OK, you should perhaps try to download and install a newer (or different) version of the driver from the Nvidia site. Also check that the card settings (in the Nvidia control panel)are set to the SU-recommended values, for instance Antialiasing should be set to Application controlled.
Anssi
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This is just an update. After saving the file with a new name, I again---with fear and trepidation (whatever that is)---turned on the shadows in the model. This time it worked normally, with very little time lag. Until I selected the Line tool, and prepared to draw. Then the screen went white, and only slowly returned to the original view in a step by step manner.
So now I can't blame the lock-up problem on the file size, or the video card, or the weird component. I guess the lesson here is to get all your drawing done before turning on the shadows.PS---Speaking of shadows, I noticed the Maple Tree component was not casting shadows. So I opened the component and selected <<Cast Shadows>>. Unfortunately, the shadows take the shape of the rectangular, transparent backgound around the natural shape of the trees. Is there a way to tell the shadow function to ignore transparent parts of an image?
Here's the tree image on 3DW:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=a1b1b86f9ccff3eebb8aaa7fb7119bb2Yes, I got hooked on the fall tree image, and even though it has cost me a lot of time and frustration, I haven't found an acceptable substitute.
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Postscript:
I don't know the significance of this observation. Even with Shadows turned off, when I start to draw with the Line tool, SU locks up---for no apparent reason. And in the Task Manager, I see two instances of SketchUp application. One has the SU icon, and the other is a generic icon with the SketchUp name. The generic icon may be for an error message, but of course I can't see it because the screen is blank.
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Have you tried opening and working on the model on another machine. As I said before, a recent Windows XP security update caused my machine to lock up when working on large models.
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@watkins said:
Have you tried opening and working on the model on another machine. As I said before, a recent Windows XP security update caused my machine to lock up when working on large models.
I don't allow Windows to automatically update for that very reason. I have all the major service packs, but none of the recent "fixes".
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