Plugins that use CPU when idle?

derei

It turns out that it is Twilight that keeps on working in the background all the time, even when SU is minimized.
I can't see why that should be necessary?
Removing Twilight brings SU back to 0% when idle (except of course when moving the mouse across its window or doing something else inside SU).
Anyone else seen this with Twilight?

Were you rendering something? Be aware that the rendering engine still works if you close the render window. You have to stop the render (either stop button, or right click on image and choose to stop after next pass), if you want to end it.

bjornkn

@unknownuser said:

Were you rendering something? Be aware that the rendering engine still works if you close the render window. You have to stop the render (either stop button, or right click on image and choose to stop after next pass), if you want to end it.
No, I'm not rendering anything. If I do the CPU uses 99%. Just an empty scene, in the background or even when minimized.

CadFather

just to clear things up - twilight is %0 on mine...

wonder how many people have the same plugins settings in the entire planet..

thomthom

@unknownuser said:

@cadfather said:

(perhaps something to do with observers)

I was writing a response having this thought, but I deleted it, when you posted yours . I'm inclined to think the same... maybe there are plugins that have observers active for watching the cursor position, or chanve view, edit/create/delete geometry... and maybe that ones are using so much CPU

There are no observers for cursor positions.

CadFather

..maybe it isn't cursor position but it still affects the mouse movement?

thomthom

Could be validation procs for menus and toolbars ... they seem to trigger very often.

CadFather

sounds like a good lead, it's a bit like they greying context menus..

thomthom

They are things that needs to be used with care. The greyout is a SketchUp design limitation. But, if people make the validation procs process the whole active entities and do many calculations then that will cause slowdowns. I spent an evening tracing down plugins that slowed down the context menu. Way too many process the whole model context or selection - which slows the menu down with seconds. In worst cases you end up with the SU window freezing while the context menu loads, then it finally appear the window flicker - causing the context menu to close by itself...

CadFather

i did the same - in fact got rid of the context menus wherever possible - and placed the menu either in plugins or as icons.

spent a whole night (in sketchup heaven) going through all my favourites: if i had an icon on a toolbar - unless i needed it for a shortcut key, say like TIG's mirror - i removed it from the plugins menu altogether.

haven't seen a pesky grey for a long time - thought i always expect it and i'm still surprised when it's not there..

bjornkn

@thomthom said:

They are things that needs to be used with care. The greyout is a SketchUp design limitation. But, if people make the validation procs process the whole active entities and do many calculations then that will cause slowdowns. I spent an evening tracing down plugins that slowed down the context menu. Way too many process the whole model context or selection - which slows the menu down with seconds. In worst cases you end up with the SU window freezing while the context menu loads, then it finally appear the window flicker - causing the context menu to close by itself...

I noticed that the Twilight plugin adds a toolbar, fold-out menu item in Plugin menu, + a context menu.
The context menu shows a fold-out arrow, but nothing folds out (unlike in the PLugin menu, where it does fold out).
Could this be a "sign"?

Gaieus

That context menu will only fold out when a component is selected (or also when a Twilight light I think).

bjornkn

@gaieus said:

That context menu will only fold out when a component is selected (or also when a Twilight light I think).

You're right! But not with a group..? Never used that menu item before.

mac1

Go here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals. They have some utilities that nay help like proc. monitor ,virtual memory map stc. You could try and open task manager, and shut down all processes expect for those required for the system. ( When you restart they will restart so don't do that.) Then watch the performance monitor screen( control panel , admin tools , performance not the task manager process monitor) You can check happenings thru out by adding various monitor points. You could even contact Mark at System Internals and see if he would make a TS suggestion.
Just some thoughts.
BTW the 1/2, 1/2, 1/2 is only a binary search if the probability of occurrence are equal. If they are not equal then the groupings are adjusted accordingly to make the guess entropy equal as possible

Chris Fullmer

I really dislike right click tools. It's just not that handy in my mind.

bjornkn

Well, I don't know how useful it would be to know exactly in what procedure it happens.

I'm a bit surprised that other user(s) (only one report so far) reports 0% CPU with Twilight installed and SU in background/minmimized.
I suppose it could be a conflict between Twilight and some other plugins?

It's not really a big deal now, after I got a new CPU with 4 threads, as it only runs in one thread, making it around 5% CPU usage.
The percentage was higher on my old 2-core CPU.