Sketchup is broken

thomthom

What you will find is a plugin that start some type of bad behavior and will think you have the problem solved. However if you redo the exercise, changing the order of testing plugins, you will find out that particular plugin may not be causing the problem. Now some other plugin will cause the problem.

Yea - I'm pretty sure there is no single plugin that causes the diabled menus. The disabled menus can be reproduced without any installed. But having a number of plugins makes the situation worse. That's why I'm now rebuilding my collection by adding strictly what I use - not having loads of nice-to-have plugins.

Glenn at home

Well let me add myself to the list as well. I have also noticed this in the last few weeks. It's not every time I start SU but it is happening. I am on WinXP SP3, dual-core AMD based system with an nVidia GF8600GT card.

EscapeArtist

@ Rick,

That would be a great idea, but until the wandering plugin menus problem gets fixed, it wouldn't be worth it. Every time you'd enable something you'd be chasing menus again.

Add me to the list as well of grayed-out plugin menus. I haven't updated to the most recent build of SU, but the problem seems to be worse with folks who have. That, or as they've updated, the number of plugins has increased as well and is part of the problem. Anyway, sometimes it happens very quickly ~ 5 minutes after SU start, and other times it'll take a half hour before the menus go grey. I wonder if it has anything to do with a particular operation happening simultaneously with auto-save? Quick way to figure that out would be to disable auto-save.

Win7 64 bit, Nvidia 9800 GTX+, Core Duo processor.

pmolson

You people are making me nervous.

I use sketchup pro current release.
I spend, on average, about 6 hours a day working with it.
I have never experienced any of the issues being discussed here.
"knock on wood"
I use less than five plugins.

Is the over riding consensus that the plugins are the issue?
Have the issues been reported by anybody using a "clean" install
of su?
If it is a plug-in issue, is it Sketchups responsibility to adapt
their program to (for lack of a better term) home made scripts or is
it the script writers responsibility to make them work with su?

The answer is probably...both.

I do feel a need to have an official su representative comment on
this and put fears to rest.

Who are the official su people...are they part of this forum?

Paul

thomthom

@pmolson said:

If it is a plug-in issue, is it Sketchups responsibility to adapt
their program to (for lack of a better term) home made scripts or is
it the script writers responsibility to make them work with su?

How on earth do you adapt to this? (spoken as a plugin writer)

pmolson

to thomthom,
How on earth would we do that?....That is the big question isn't it.

I hope I did not come across as laying blame. That was not my intent.
I know nothing about writing plug-ins and I am very appreciative of
those of you who share your hard work.

From what I can gather from reading this post, it sounds like
plug-ins are conflicting with an su update. Can we say that?

If we can't definitely answer that question, then there is no
starting point for fixing it.

I think anything can be fixed with the correct questions and good
communication with the people in a position to answer them.

So, who are the Google sketchup people and how does one access them?

I really don't have a clue, are they just a ghostly presence moving in
& out of the forums dimension or...where are they?

It is hard to believe that sketchup is broken. I do not want to believe it

Google Su official people, please come to this forumn and put these fears to rest!

p

xrok1

@thomthom said:

@unknownuser said:

What you will find is a plugin that start some type of bad behavior and will think you have the problem solved. However if you redo the exercise, changing the order of testing plugins, you will find out that particular plugin may not be causing the problem. Now some other plugin will cause the problem.

Yea - I'm pretty sure there is no single plugin that causes the diabled menus. The disabled menus can be reproduced without any installed. But having a number of plugins makes the situation worse. That's why I'm now rebuilding my collection by adding strictly what I use - not having loads of nice-to-have plugins.

i still don't understand why plugins can't be loaded on demand? all the menu's and such loaded but the code not executed unless called on during that session. or am i missing something?

thomthom

The disabled menus can be reproduces without any plugins. That indicate that the root of the problem is within SU itself. However, it does appear that having a great number of plugins makes the situation worse. But the does not seem to be any particular plugin that worsen it. Because of this the situation is very difficult to handle.

boofredlay

Odd, I have 115 .rb files and their accompanying folders in my Plugin folder and I don't experience any such problems (Knock on Wood_Cherry_Original).
I also have a few more on my home machine and again, no problems.

TIG

@xrok1 said:

@thomthom said:

@unknownuser said:

What you will find is a plugin that start some type of bad behavior and will think you have the problem solved. However if you redo the exercise, changing the order of testing plugins, you will find out that particular plugin may not be causing the problem. Now some other plugin will cause the problem.

Yea - I'm pretty sure there is no single plugin that causes the diabled menus. The disabled menus can be reproduced without any installed. But having a number of plugins makes the situation worse. That's why I'm now rebuilding my collection by adding strictly what I use - not having loads of nice-to-have plugins.

i still don't understand why plugins can't be loaded on demand? all the menu's and such loaded but the code not executed unless called on during that session. or am i missing something?

You can load plugins on demand - simply rename them from .rb to .txt and then later use load "ruby.txt" - manually or in a 'tool' - BUT the rub is you can't 'unload' them ???

xrok1

@unknownuser said:

You can load plugins on demand - simply rename them from .rb to .txt and then later use load "ruby.txt" - manually or in a 'tool' - BUT the rub is you can't 'unload' them ???

yes but the toolbars and menu's won't be there right? (and i suppose toolbar hell would happen )i wouldn't mind it staying active per session anyway.

jgb

And people wonder why I stick with Version 6.

thomthom

@jgb said:

And people wonder why I stick with Version 6.

? Nothing in this thread is related to SU version...

jgb

@thomthom said:

@jgb said:

And people wonder why I stick with Version 6.

? Nothing in this thread is related to SU version...

I have never had any of those issues in V6.

I have read of countless new and improved problems in V7 and V7.1, and yet few of the real V6 problems have been fixed in V7.x

V7.x Free offers so little extra (notably the line crossing fix) over V6 Free that it makes no sense to me to upgrade for more problems.

thomthom

Break Edges is a great new feature. And the speed improvement in 7.1 is significant. The Back button in the component browser came back - so even that was taken care of.

EarthMover

I'm happy to report that I've been working hard on a project all evening and since installing the update for LibFredo and the updated Tools on Surface, my Sketchup is back to normal. All of my weird quirks have disappeared. Right click menu hasn't gone gray in over 4 hours of modeling. The Esc key is working every time as well. Seems LibFredo was the culprit all along! Big thanks for Fredo for addressing it so quickly.

lapx

Greyout menu's in Sketchup are not just limited to Fredo's plugins from what i'm experincing. Hope this is resoslved soon.
It's become very frustrating.

TIG

@lapx said:

Greyout menu's in Sketchup are not just limited to Fredo's plugins from what I'm experiencing. Hope this is resolved soon.
It's become very frustrating.
If you have the latest copies of all plugins it should reduce the incidence of 'gray-outs'. Some of Fredo's were implicated in the issue but they have all been updated - as have virtually all tools I can think of... However, there is a finite limit to the number of tools you can have loaded at any time that are using 'commands' - these are needed for toolbar-buttons and many context-menu items. So if you have lots of plugins loading it will increase the risk of the gray-out happening. So it's wise to disable any plugins that you rarely use - deactivate unused extensions or rename the scripts' .rb files with '.txt' on the end - then they don't auto-load... BUT they can be reloaded for one session when you find you need them by typing into the Ruby Console load "plugin.rb.txt" - where 'plugin' is the original name... Of course renaming so they end with .rb again will make them auto-load again.
There is also a tool to optimize 'commands'... but it will have limited efficacy in the face of zillions of plugins, so give it have a chance! [ http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=252413#p252413 ]

lapx

Thanks Tig, I scaled back on my plugins by unloading in the preference extentions menu. That seems to work for now. I'll have to load up the "otimizer".

mac1

I'll comment again probably where I have no business , but I expressed concern some time ago related to issues with plugins probably costing Google support dollars and if the the issues raised are not brought under control you may will find your self where Google will impose requirements you may not like. Dan Rathburn tried but don't think he had much success.
Secondly: When one talks about problems and SU blame that's very generic and you have to worry memory snd system also. For a 32 bit machine , that means you can only address 4GB but SU only gets 2GB9 If you have 4GB RAM) because the way the MS memory manager works. Even if you have a 64 bit machine and tons of memory SU will still only be allocated 4 GB even though 64B allows much more address than that. Some of these strange artifacts can very well be memory issues. When you have problems watch the task manager and see and understand what it is reporting. Win xp, vista etc are not all the same. See this link if you have some spare time and want to under stand virtual memory, which is what programs get to use, and physical memory. It will make your eyes glaze over?? http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2008/11/17/3155406.aspx. and the post here in of opening a 360MB SU file with Win XP pro and 4GB Ram http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=39401
Thirdly:It is completely unreasonable to tag Google with any responsibility of running regression testing of any external plugin in the software drop. If you have had to do this you will know what I mean.
Sorry if I am totally out of line