Who said SketchUp doesn't need to be 64 bit?
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Great to see someone from the core SU team stepping in here...
@andrews said:
...this community is only a drop in the ocean compared to the multiple millions of active SketchUp users in the world, and I very much doubt that anywhere near even 5% of world-wide Pro users would see tangible gains from adding 64-bit support (let alone Make users).
I'd challenge you and claim it's because they know zip about 16bit, 32bit and 64bit software...
You're talking about the average Joe who's using SketchUp similar to how they're using MS Word or Excel...Like everyone else, I'm a user of several programs... I.e. Adobe PhotoShop, Illustrator, etc... etc... not to mention all the MS suits like Word, Excel etc... etc...
However, I've never been part of any of their respective communities...I know huge architectural companies who are using SU professionally on a daily basis, but where no-one are part of either the official SU community nor do they know about the existence of this board...
I'd say that less than 2% of the multiple millions of active SU users in the world cares about joining such communities... Most because they don't know about their existence, some because they don't have the time to get involved, others because of cultural things and others again because of language barriers...
(As an example, I'm quite certain that there's a huge customer base in the Far East, who would never join this board...)
Regardless of the cause, the vast majority just don't know what is possible and what's not... As I mentioned earlier, they're using SU similar to how the average Joe is using Word or Excel...The SCF community has grown to more than 250.000 users... As a software developing company, you should embrace every input you can get from here... Positive as well as negative...
Although the SCF is only a drop in the ocean compared to the multiple millions of active SketchUp users in the world, we are the spokesmen for the silent majority...Solo have a great point with his statement:
@unknownuser said:
...especially folks that use 3rd party integrated software...
Jeff also has a great and very legitimate point:
@unknownuser said:
won't it have to go 64bit eventually?
how much longer will OSX support 32bit apps?
like- can you even run a 16bit application on OSX anymore?I'm not saying that if you take the 64bit route, all issues will get cured, but I really don't understand why you cling to 32bit, when everyone else go the 64bit route...
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We might not represent the bulk of SU users here at SCF, but we sure as hell do a lot to promote it and develop it's capabilities. What would SU be without all the great plugin developers here at SCF?
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@hieru said:
What would SU be without all the great plugin developers here at SCF?
I doubt I'd be using SU if not for the developers here at SCF.
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@andrews said:
To put this differently, the point is that one must consider whether the production of a 64-bit binary alone provides enough benefit to warrant sacrificing all of the other things that might be accomplished with such effort.
Same song and dance -- and you know I bought it, but that was when I though you guys were actually going to do "something" (anything) with the resources saved. However, in light of the fact that you have done essentially nothing for the last 5 years, I would say that all you have shown is that you in fact fully intend to keep doing nothing for as long as you can get away with it.
Meanwhile other applications, applications without nearly the backing you guys have and are also several times more complex than SketchUp, have already done the work and have successfully moved on.
Try selling your misdirection to somebody who is foolish enough to actually buy it.
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I'd love to have a 64 bit version too
I'm very often using tgi3d PhotoScan on projects, and they will often contain up to 70+ 7Mpx photos alongside the model itself. The file may be 350MB+ and SU uses 2GB+ while working. Pretty close to the "border", but only a few times have I encountered that "out of memory" message (knock on wood
!But another problem here is that I would like to send such big image-loaded skp files to Layout, but currently that's not at all possible because Layout slows down so much that it is completely useless. The workaround is to export 2D images (or even screen grabs), which is not quite satisfying.
A solution could be to give us a choice if we want to keep all images inside the file, or just load them when needed? -
May I ask if SU works better on a 32bit machine than on a 64bit machine as a 64bit needs to emulate 32bits which in essence slows it down?
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@solo said:
May I ask if SU works better on a 32bit machine than on a 64bit machine as a 64bit needs to emulate 32bits which in essence slows it down?
can't ask a mac user.. the last two OS releases have been 64bit only.. there is no 32 bit kernel in mountain lion nor mavericks so i can't boot into 32bit even if i wanted to..
also of note (maybe) is that even apple's lesser hardware (phones and tablets) are 64bit now.. obviously, i'm not a developer but from a user pov, they're sending a pretty clear message.. quit making 32bit applications.
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@solo said:
May I ask if SU works better on a 32bit machine than on a 64bit machine as a 64bit needs to emulate 32bits which in essence slows it down?
It is no real "emulation" like a game console emulator (or some virtual machines). The 64bit processor is running in 32bit mode, and since the instruction set of x32 / x64 is not much different and all translation done in hardware (and not software), it shouldn't be noticeable.
Out of 1483 executables on my computer I found 1479 64bit and 4 32bit, but such dump statistics don't worry me at all. If I hadn't looked at such technical things, I would not care about the bitness of my calculator application. But we SCF members seem to care when it affects larger, more complex productivity applications like SketchUp. Maybe SketchUp "just" has plenty of more serious bottlenecks apart from memory limits that need to be fixed first?
That we don't even know? 
Let's imagine SketchUp had an "agenda 2020". How would it look like? I'm pretty sure by then it will be 64 bit. So this investment needs to be done somewhen.
3 man years out of how many engineers, and this is known since how many years? True, there are many new open construction sites, but they must know best when and how to focus their efforts. -
Open question to all the 64 bit band wagon posters herein:
Tell me where you can buy a fully compliant 64 bit system now and if not now when will they be available?
Oops you can not Now why is that??
A hint => You must be able to address that much memory and that size system does not exist and MS limits through SKU OS versions max memory because they can not even test such a large system.
Open comment to Andrew=> SU does not allocate memory and in fact cannot even touch it. It can request memory but only the OS actually allocates physical memory.
So the bottom line is:" You need 64 bits and how much memory do you need with that??" -
I was hoping that Andrew would post another reply here...
Not only a reply to my post, but also to some of the other posts...I've been thinking... (Yes - it happens...
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If the primary obstacle for not making SketchUp 64bit compliant is a matter of limited resources, why don't the management find a solution to eliminate this challenge...??
I mean... What about outsourcing some parts to specialists...??
Perhaps it's not very popular, but there are plenty of very talented developers in i.e. India - and I would assume also in China...In my previous career I was working close with some developers in India and - to my surprise - it actually went very well...
The daily communication was by e-mail and then once a week we had a conference call by Skype...
I will not weary you with the details, but this is just to say that there really is plenty of opportunities...Arguments that you don't have sufficient resources doesn't last...
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Want do you expect to hear from Andrew? Most of all the post I have read are basically saying we want more. How does one plan/design to some thing like that?
Three man years to convert in my experience base is nothing. I've seen much more than that on just validation of models we built using industry standard software. Usually as a manager when you ask for changes you find folks think they are always operating at the optimum point. Their cost/schedule curve is U shaped and at any point in time they are operating at the min. point. Changes start with long range plans, convincing management to allocate company resources and then IRAD work to support the long range plan. What is in Trimble's plans I have no idea and I don't even know if they are publically trade so one could even try and find out ( They hide things like that any way)
The developers are also constrained to operate within the context of the hardware and software(OS) available to them and is the resource I was addressing. My sense is most users would be happy with a 64 bit system with 16GB RAM. However, I have seen posting in this forum folks have dual monitor system with such large graphics memory they were throwing away RAM gained when 64 bit windows came out by allocations required for their drivers.I have many more concerns / comments but given I am a free user do not have standing to make them. Waiting on paying users to make their voice heard.
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@mac1 said:
I have many more concerns / comments but given I am a free user do not have standing to make them. Waiting on paying users to make their voice heard.
for me personally, having a 64bit foundation is more symbolic than any immediately noticeable performance gains that one may or may not see.
it's modernizing the base application and signifying sketchup is ready to grow into the next decade or two.
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@mac1 said:
Want do you expect to hear from Andrew?
Some comments to the posts made...
If I knew what he'd be writing/replying, I wouldn't need to post anything, since I would know the answer on beforehand...@mac1 said:
Most of all the post I have read are basically saying we want more. How does one plan/design to some thing like that?
I suppose you haven't been part of previous discussions regarding why SU don't want to be 64bit compliant...
For me it's definitely not just because I want to ask for more... Like many others, I'm using 3rd party integrated software, however, since SU is causing limitations enabling me to utilize more than 3Gb RAM, I would prefer that SU was 64bit compliant...Besides, I don't really understand why they cling to the 32bit system... It just doesn't make any sense to me and a whole lot of others...
Andrew stepped in and informed that it was also a matter of resources available...
Another point in the post he made was that only a few out of the multi million user base, don't ask for this...
I find it pointless to repeat everything I wrote...
I wrote what I did and I would expect some kind of reply/comment to the post I made...
Is that really too much to ask...? -
@unknownuser said:
Andrew stepped in and informed that it was also a matter of resources available...
Another point in the post he made was that only a few out of the multi million user base, don't ask for this...If Apple worked like this there would not have been iPod, iPad, iPhones either as the majority never asked for it.
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Wow, this thread has really taken off.
A worrying thing is that it seems they haven't even started converting to 64 bit to future proof SU.
But maybe SU is the exception from the rule and wouldn't in anyway benefit from being 64bit.
I would have thought that this process would be ongoing at some low level at least. The first thing that I thought about when I heard Trimble had bought it was that they really have to make SU able to handle files with dense geometry better now.
I and other professionals use many different 3d software that is 64 bit and doesn't have the kind of problems SU has with 'more geometry'. Why is that?
I know J. Bacus have said that: "Access to memory is not the bottleneck in SketchUp where 'more geometry' is concerned."
If it isn't then please tell us what the bottleneck is and fix it.By the way, how many developers are they? Does anyone know?
Those of you who were at Basecamp maybe have a clue.Is there anyway to run some diagnostics in the background that if SU runs out of memory makes a dump of all running processes and memory used at that point?
When these crashes appeared I didn't get a bugsplat I simply got that popup and another with "The application has unexpectedly closed". And it was gone. -
@pixero said:
A worrying thing is that it seems they haven't even started converting to 64 bit to future proof SU.
But you'll never need more than 640k, applications will never be too big for a handful of 720k floppies, or manage to fill up a 40MB hard drive, or...
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Well.. in this thread, at least I finally heard the reason why in 2014 a.c. there's still no x64.
Two man years is (in other words ~$200K, or what is a typical programmer's salary at Google BTW?) too unbearable 'loss' for Google\Trimble.
Unbelievable! -
@hieru said:
A good point well made. 64 bit can take a flying leap if subD, quads and proper UV mapping is in the works.
Don't count on it:
@unknownuser said:
jbacus @jbacusfrom Twitter02 Mar
SU isn't a quad modeler. Nor is it more likely to become one in the future than it is to become an aardvark. Why must it?
jbacus @jbacusfrom Twitter02 Mar
SU isn't a sub-d modeler. Nor is it more likely to become one in the future than it is to become an aardvark. Why must it?
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From what I have seen (working with other software companies) the real issue is a 64-bit Mac version -- converting the PC side of things seems to be very simple by comparison, whereas the Mac side requires essentially a full rewrite.
This is also why the latest version of formZ (beta
was specific in mentioning that they had added not only quads/subD capabilities, but also full 64-bit Mac version.In the past it has been mentioned that the SketchUp team is anti-PC (or pro-Mac if you want to look at that way) -- so they may be reluctant to give the PC version features they are unwilling to give the Mac side.
As far as I am concerned the only real issue with SketchUp is that Bacus is in charge of its development. As long as that is true the software and I (and it seems the rest of the 3D world) will continue to go in different directions.
Those of you who are happy with the status quo are just setting yourself up for bigger issues later down the line.
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