Sketchup not responding when handling more complex plugins

darrentan

Hi all,

My sketchup (mac) stops responding whenever i am using more "complex" and curve-related plugins such as shape bender, round corners and fredo scale. For instance, when using shape bender, it stops responding when finalizing all bends, and the rainbow cursor comes out.

I've tried creating a new file and turning off all other plugins, loading just the one in use, but to no avail.

I'm currently running on:
macbook pro 8gb ram,
2.4ghz osx lion v10.7.4
sketchup pro 8.03

How can i stop it from crashing? Any help would be really appreciated.

Cheers,
Darren.

TIG

There's a difference between crashing and not responding.
If Sketchup stops works and closes and/or there's a Bugsplat! window something has gone seriously adrift.
If the screen whites-out, status-bar text stops updating [e.g. a % done counter] it is not necessarily a sign that it's broken - just that it's thinking - this is exacerbated when the number of processed entities reaches a certain upper limit after which things slow almost exponentially.
With complex geometry and tools that are manipulating it it can take time to complete and Sketchup does have the annoying trait of stopping responding while it's working too hard.
On a PC Task Manager can be opened and you can still see Sketchup is ticking away processing data. There's probably a similar MAC system tool.
The issue also can been seen with some native-tools like Drape with complex objects/surfaces/etc...
If you wait the processing should complete - have a coffee/lunch/nap/etc and come back...
Also try and reduce the complexity of the geometry you are processing, do it in bite-sized-chunks, etc.
Of course you ought to save before doing any intensive operation that might go wrong...

Dan Rathbun

Minimize styling

Turn Shadows OFF

There have been other threads that talk about how to speed up rendering while editing.

TIG

Also switch Textures off - these eat memory.

By 'minimize Styling' Dan means to use a Style that is without profiles, extensions, endpoints, jitter, line-styling, back-faces, watermarks, photo-matching, finest-transparency, xray-mode, etc etc... You can have different Scene tabs sets - one with a simple Style to use when doing complex editing and the others for 'presentation' etc...

Shadows do take up a lot of processing to...

Check your OpenGL settings are also optimized to give the best performance generally...

darrentan

Thanks for the reply.

The problem I am facing now is that all the actions involving the curves or complex plugins cause my sketchup to stop responding (not crash-sorry for misusing the term earlier).

My office computer, windows version, seems to work perfectly fine when i perform the similar actions. They usually take just seconds to complete, but on my macbook, the longest I waited was about 2 hours and it still wasn't responding.

I have tried simple geometry just to get the plugin to work. Like trying to get a rectangle to bend along an arc in shape bender. No shadows or materials, working on a new file. It always get stuck at "finalizing all bends".

Would a reinstall of my sketchup help? Everything else works fine though. Just the mentioned problems with the plugins.

Dave R

@darrentan said:

I'm currently running on:
macbook pro 8gb ram,
2.4ghz osx lion v10.7.4
sketchup pro 8.03

8.03? The current version of SketchUp 8 for Mac is 8.0.15157. Where did you get version 8.03? Maybe that has something to do with it?

Dan Rathbun

He likely means MR3, and should update to MR4 if he has not yet. (There are some Mac bug fixes in the latest release.)

See Release Notes.

Dan Rathbun

Also be sure the Outliner is closed.

melosa

Darren,

Have you found a solution yet? I'm having the exact problems.

Thanks,

Melissa

Dave R

Melissa, welcome to SCF.

So exactly what problem are you having? What plugin(s) do you have? What is the geometry like that you are trying to work on? Could you post an example SKP file?

Dan Rathbun

@darrentan said:

My SketchUp (Mac) stops responding [beachballs] whenever i am using more "complex" and curve-related plugins such as shape bender, round corners and fredo scale.

It would be best to contact the author of a specific plugin, by posting a query in the talk thread for that plugin. (It is usually in the Plugins forum.)

Generally... we developers have noticed that some of the API's geometry creation methods get overloaded when arrays of very precise Numeric values (expressed to many decimal places far beyond SketchUp's internal 0.001 inch tolerance,) are passed into these methods.
These methods perform MUCH better (and faster,) if the values passed in are first converted to Geom::Point3d objects OR Arrays of Length class objects (despite the fact that the API dictionary says that arrays of Numerics are compatible with most methods expecting Geom::Point3d or Geom::Vector3d objects.)

So it may also help, when contacting the plugin author, to tell them what you have the model units set to, and also the decimal precision you have set. (SketchUp still uses inches internally.)

thomthom

Sample model or screenshots would help so we have an idea of what we're talking about.

broady0rr

2014 is not responding to Quit, have reinstalled, deleted 2013 etc. etc. [Mac 10.9.2, 8GB RAM.
2013 was performing absolutely fine. Also not Plugin Folder? Thanks, GB

JQL

@dan rathbun said:

Also be sure the Outliner is closed.

This is the first thing to do!

Close the Outliner and every complex plugin will be faster. Sometimes they're only useable with this turned on. Sometimes even simple plugins only work with this turned of. Take a look at the mirror plugin page.

saidgank

i have same problem.... http://saidgank.blogspot.com/2017/03/cara-mengatasi-not-responding-pada-SKETCHUP.html my sketchup always not responding