Sketchup 14 mac crashing like never before

Chris Fullmer

Hi Chuck, if you remove all your plugins and then try running SU for a while, does it work correctly again?

otb designworks

Hi chris,

I will give that a shot. I just had a client over and SU was crashing at an unbelievable level.

I ended up having to close the file. Quit SU. Open SU. Open new file.

If I just closed a file and opened a new one, it would crash 80% of the time.

I will purge plugin and see how that works; thanks

driven

@chuck,

you can rename 'Plugins' from 'Ruby Console'

dir = File.dirname(Sketchup.find_support_files("", "Plugins").first)
# adding _copy will block the folder loading and SU will make a new one with only su rubies
dir_suppressed = dir + "_copy"
# if you have a saved copy, the 'temp' new Plugins end up in trash...
dir_to_trash = (File.expand_path("~/.Trash/Plugins" )
  if File.exists?(dir_suppressed)
    File.rename(dir, dir_to_trash)
    File.rename(dir_suppressed, dir)
  else 
    File.rename(dir, dir_suppressed)
  end
# and then a re-start to load the 'Plugins' folder...

run once to suppress the folder, restart, test, run again to put it back, restart...

john

otb designworks

Thanks John,

I emptied my folder and started adding them back one after another.

I have a highly surprising suspicious one that is definitely causing trouble. I will report back when I know for sure.

Thanks everyone!

otb designworks

OK, here is with I came up with.

I have 4 files, 3 are version 2014 and 1 is version 13. Of the 3, one is a 100meg monster with lots of foliage, high res textures, etc.

I emptied the plugin folder, fired up SU, started with one of the 2014, then the other 2014, then the v13, and, if all is good, I hit it with the 100meg monster.

I added one plugin at a time back and continued testing.

As surprising as it may seem, without any doubt, the culprit is SectionCutFace v4.4. I know, no way a TIG plugin is throwing SU for a loop, but it definitely is.

I can have every plugin back in the folder and SU will happily open, open, and open more.

When I put the three sectioncutface items back into the folder, SU will maybe get the first 2 open 50% of the time. The v13 will kill it almost every time, even with only one other file open. Never got 3 files open without a crash.

I removed the SCF plugin and tried again and everything ran with no issues.

So, thinning I somehow got a corrupted install of SCF, I went back through the Sketchucation plugin store and installed a fresh version.

Crash crash crash.

remove the plugin files (~superseded, sectioncutface folder, and sectioncutface.rb) and everything seems to be fine in the few minutes I tried to crash SU without success.

plugin back in and crash again.

I'll send a TIG a PM pointing to this thread, but something is definitely not working correctly, either on the plugin side, or mac, or mavericks, or who knows.

driven

TIG's got a mac as well now, so maybe it can be resolved quicky...
john

TIG

Now I am awake I'll look into this.

There is no way that SectionCutFace should cause issues.
But if it does, and it's the only loading Plugin, then we have a mystery.
It does include an observer - used for the Auto-Update option [which is NOT recommended for anything but the simplest models anyway].
So this might be causing issues as some Observers on a MAC can be flaky.
Perhaps it's not loading/unloading cleanly
BUT I don't see any issues on my MAC [Mavericks too]...

Sometimes observers clash with other tools or another tool's observers causes issues with an innocent tool - but if you can get SectionCutFace to fail when it's the only Plugin loading then it's weird...

Give me a little time to investigate...

@otb designworks
I might PM you some alternative code to test...
So a lack of action here might simply reflect frantic behind the scenes testing

tt_su

We have seen that a fix for a previous observer crash could have lead to a new one in SU2014. TIG, if you can play around with it - temporarily disable it to see if it still crashes that would be a good place to start. Then report it back to us.

For instance, in SU2014 removing and EntityObserver in the onEntityErased event now crashes because we fixed a memory leak.

Has there been any BugSplats submitted for this issue? With any name/description we can use to look them up?

TIG

@thomthom

I'll look at the SCFace Observers [Tools and App] shortly.
The AppObs simply attaches the ToolsObs with a onNew/onOpen event.
The ToolsObs does nothing unless there are some Auto-Update [aka Glued] SCFaces in the model.
I'm wondering if there's an issue with it 'unloading the two Observers' via the AppObs 'onQuit', for some MAC versions ?

I'll report back...

tt_su

@tig said:

I'm wondering if there's an issue with it 'unloading the two Observers' via the AppObs 'onQuit', for some MAC versions ?

Are you removing the observer when SketchUp quits?

TIG

I've just put SCFace through its paces again on my MAC with Mavericks: using a combo of its 'types' - AutoUpdate/UpdateOnDemand/Unlinked - with opening/new SKPs etc, adding new SCFaces etc, and then quitting SketchUp - all behaved normally - no issues at all

Just like on PC...

When SketchUp onQuits SCFace AppObs tries to remove the model's SCFace ToolsObs and then the SCFace AppObs itself etc.
These are in a begin...rescue... to trap errors...

Does removing an observer on MAC at onQuit work differently to PC.
I know that unlike PCs MACs get several instances of SketchUp - one per open model ?

Perhaps I've missed a combo...

tt_su

I think onQuit was not working prior to SU2014 - should be fixed now.
If the user's who experienced this have submitted BugSplats then I might be able to dig into that and find clues to where the crash happens.

otb designworks

I have sent a bugsplat report every time so there are probably 30 or 40 of them from me in the last week.

I am happy to run code or test if anyone needs it.

The crashes seem to happen after the new file window opens but before the layers and scenes palettes populate, fwiw

I can make a short screencast if that helps?

Thanks guys!!!

TIG

@Chuck

Anything to track it down...
I can't reproduce a splat at all...

otb designworks

Hi TIG,

Do you have some large SU files? Saved as v13?

What happens when you try to open 2 of those one after another?

I'll whip up a short screencast...

tt_su

Any chance you can share with us your plugins folder? (You can PM me privately)
Also, in your bugplats, did you enter any name or description I can use to look up the crashes?

otb designworks

No, I didn't enter anything, sorry.

I will get it to crash and send a couple with description.

I am happy to share the plugin folder; I'll PM you asap

thanks

tt_su

Thanks - if I can get hold of at least one of the BugSplats I find the rest.
Is there a way you can provoke the crash? A set of instructions you make make it crash every time? Or at least a high probability?

otb designworks

Hi Thomas,

I just sent over two bugs splats,

look for otb designworks or cgailey1 at bresnan dot net

I referenced SCF in the description.

I uploaded a bunch of screenshots of testing with and without the SCF plugin installed. You can find them here

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/u6hrf9qiwcwjbbx/cCLTGJ7GbI

otb designworks

I can easily provoke a crash. All I have to do is put the SCF items in the plugins folder and start opening files.

half the time, it will crash without even opening one, almost always with the second, and will 100% crash with a v13 added to the mix.

Pull the plugin items out and everything works perfect.

I have run that cycle probably 10 times now with the same results