Ultimate Sketchup Workstation
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About 18 months ago I spent a decent amount of money on a Workstation that was pretty high end at the time and probably still is. I've been fairly disappointed in it however as I work with large Sketchup files with lots of buildings, imported DWG site plans, 3d trees etc and it can really slow to a crawl. I'm well aware of switching off layers/components etc but ultimately I want to export an image with everything switched on together with shadows and sketch styles. This can take a huge amount of time adjusting views to get them right then exporting. If I want to save half a dozen views it can take the best part of a days work due mainly to the slow performance. With a small model the same work would take only a few minutes per view. It's very frustrating.
My question is has technology moved on sufficiently to notice a significant improvement if I bought a new workstation? My current specs are:
64Bit Quad-Core Processor i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz, 4025 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
12GB PC3-1333 1333MHz Triple Channel DDR3 Memory
NVIDIA Quadro FX3800 1.0GB Graphics CardThese still look like decent specs but any input would be welcome if anyone can recommend a system that would handle large models with ease. Or is it the case that I should wait a bit longer until PC power gets better still and/or Sketchup becomes more efficient at handling high poly models.
Kenny
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You are already more than good enough for Sketchup -- better hardware will help very little.
Best,
Jason. -
Your kit is fine it's more the heavy model I'm afraid. There are plugins like Ghostcomp and Xref that might help. I haven't used Xref but Ghostcomp is good for anything out of shot.
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Yes, use the Ghost components plugin. First it may seem to take longer but when you get used to the workflow, it can be a time saver.
YouTube - GhostComp 1 0 - Sketchup Plugin - Preview
[flash=480,385:2vaafet8]http://www.youtube.com/v/XZqTEQuEoLk?fs=1&hl=en_US[/flash:2vaafet8] -
AdamB's 'Proxy' plugin is very useful too- but you are left with bounding boxes rather than breakdowns of the originals.
Works well with my minuscule Mac Mini, and My equally minuscule Acer Revo!
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=21427
Tom
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Indeed.
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Here's my setup:
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 PRO
Harddrive: Corsair SSD Force Series 120GB 2.5"
CPU: Intel Core i7 2600K 3,4GHz (Sandy Bridge)
CPU fan: Noctua NH-C12P SE14
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 1536MB
RAM: Corsair 8GB (2x4096MB) 1600MHz XMS3
Power: Corsair HX 850W 80+ (ready for a possible future second SLI GPU) -
@kenny said:
My current specs are:
64Bit Quad-Core Processor i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz, 4025 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
12GB PC3-1333 1333MHz Triple Channel DDR3 Memory
NVIDIA Quadro FX3800 1.0GB Graphics Cardmost important for SU is raw number-crunching of one (1) kernel of the CPU, therefore if looking for something new go for the fastest avail CPU with the highest clock rate which currently is a Core i7-2600K 'Sandy Bridge' 3.40GHz w/ TurboBoost to 3.80GHz.
the expensive Quadro is not needed, puting the money into the CPU and using a fast GeForce GTX 560Ti/570 is regularly a better choice.
unfortunately this won't help you very much because you current specs are not that bad
a SSD may improve the overall user experience too.
hth,
Norbert -
The i7-950 is capable of an easy 4ghz OC. The voltage can be left alone and u will still reach strong stability. As discussed
in earlier posts, get a solid performing CPU and a decent GPU card. -
Thanks for all the replies everyone. It would appear that at the moment I'll just have to put up with the slow performance. Whilst I could get a slightly higher spec it doesn't look like it would be worth it in terms of any meaningful performance improvement over my current set up. For the type of work I do Sketchup is still much faster and easier than any other 3D software but on large models the actual button clicking takes seconds whilst waiting for it to respond takes hours!
It's very frustrating and throwing money at it in terms of equipment can't even address the problems. Hardware just doesn't seem to be able to keep up with how much we all push Sketchup. Or perhaps it's that Sketchup hasn't kept up with hardware in that it can't take advantage of the way hardware has gone with multi processors. Or a bit of both.
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It seems to me that the ultimate SketchUp workstation would be something like this.
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@kenny said:
Thanks for all the replies everyone. It would appear that at the moment I'll just have to put up with the slow performance. Whilst I could get a slightly higher spec it doesn't look like it would be worth it in terms of any meaningful performance improvement over my current set up. For the type of work I do Sketchup is still much faster and easier than any other 3D software but on large models the actual button clicking takes seconds whilst waiting for it to respond takes hours!
It's very frustrating and throwing money at it in terms of equipment can't even address the problems. Hardware just doesn't seem to be able to keep up with how much we all push Sketchup. Or perhaps it's that Sketchup hasn't kept up with hardware in that it can't take advantage of the way hardware has gone with multi processors. Or a bit of both.
Well Do what I do, have 2 to 4 SU sessions running and work on 4 different things. That way you are never waiting for Plugin X to complete a task
Edit: Did I mention that I am a mild sufferer of ADD
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