Who said SketchUp doesn't need to be 64 bit?
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@jeff hammond said:
can't ask a mac user.. the last two OS releases have been 64bit only.. ... 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.
Jeff,
I think the perceived message of "quit making 32-bit applications" is just a side-effect of Apple's circumstances.
Apple's switch from PowerPC to Intel CPUs in 2006 marked a perfect opportunity to simplify development substantially by beginning the universal adoption of 64-bit CPUs. The funny thing though was that even they didn't make the transition quickly. Although there were already 64-bit PowerPC CPUs available, they weren't universally so, making Apple continually drag their 32-bit stuff along in the OS until they felt comfortable dropping PowerPC support. They also didn't release their new hardware with full 64-bit support as they could have. For example, our "Apple Xserve1,1" build servers from that era had 64-bit CPUs (as have all Intel Macs ever released), but not the 64-bit EFI necessary to utilize them. As such, they only supported the 32-bit kernel!
Finally abandoning 32-bit platforms altogether required Apple to consciously drop support for all of the old PowerPC architecture, which we saw them do a few years after switching to Intel, but then also had to abandon several of the first generation of Intel-CPU-based Macs in order to get to a complete level of universal 64-bit kernel support across the board. That only just happened within the last 18 months, IIRC.
Even so, this transition was lightning fast in comparison to what's happening in the Windows world. 15 years ago, people hoped Alpha and then Itanium CPU platforms for Windows would signal the end of 32-bit Intel domination in the PC market, but those both fizzled. Intel still reigns supreme and the fact that they still manufacture 32-bit CPUs, coupled with the open architecture of the Windows platform means that unlike Apple, Microsoft doesn't get to dictate the death of the 32-bit platform, whether on desktops or on less powerful embedded systems like ATM machines or tablets. As such, as long as the hardware is out there, it's in their interest to keep making software for it. This symbiosis means there's still a very large market of 32-bit machines being sold (I think it's around 10-20% of new PCs).
I think we see the same thing echoed in iOS vs. Windows tablets. Apple has the luxury of dictating 64-bit across the board, which just serves to simplify their lives massively, so they do, and then--BOOM--that's the way it is.
But my point here is that I think that the reason Apple is making everybody do 64-bit applications now is not because there's an incontrovertible technical advantage, but because of the massive simplification they created across their whole hardware and software development business by leveraging their god-like ability to dictate a single hardware platform across their kingdom. Third-party developers needing to fall in line with what they do is just a side-effect of a move Apple made to greatly benefit themselves.
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Now, consider this: If only SketchUp had the luxury of being able to drop 32-bit support altogether, how much easier it would be for us to make the jump to 64-bit. With no 32-bit, there'd be no doubling of our testing surface, no making separate installers, no need to write all kinds of help center articles to explain to the masses how to differentiate the two releases, no modifying our store to provide different products, no educating our resellers about the differences, no translating all of that junk into a dozen languages, etc., etc., not to mention the cost savings associated with all of that.
I can't blame Apple for ditching 32-bit; that's the world I'd like to live in, too! But maybe this helps explain why adopting 64-bit while still supporting 32-bit would really suck, just like Apple saw for the 5-6 years they were in transition to the 64-bit-only approach.
Again, this means opening the 64-bit can of worms is even more expensive than just the effort required to create a 64-bit capable SketchUp.
Andrew
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oh. I was thinking it would be more of 64bit sketchup replaces 32bit sketchup but I see what you mean about still needing a 32bit version around.. at least for a while (sort of like when you had ppc and Intel support with the mac version)
on a side note-- I'm a 'victim' of the 64bit only thing with osx since I still own a 1,1 Mac Pro.. I thought it was longer than 18months ago when it lost OS support but you're probably about right.. whenever mountain lion was released.
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appreciate your detailed responses...
Sketchup, as well as Apple, no longer support 32bit hardware, so we may as well be your crash test dummies...
Maybe you can purge the 'carbon' that's still floating around...
24/04/2014 21:59:24.756 SketchUp[22606: *** WARNING: -[NSImage compositeToPoint:operation:] is deprecated in MacOSX 10.8 and later. Please use -[NSImage drawAtPoint:fromRect:operation:fraction:] instead.]
john -
Thanks for the response Andrew.
I do not know the technicality of what is needed or what is going to work better however I do know what I'd like to be able to achieve with Sketchup.
Maybe we can start a new thread and have a real discussion of what can be done to help us with higher poly models, not how to model leaner but rather how SU can be "fixed" to handle more complex scenes.
Many folks believe going 64 bit or multi thread would help, maybe even having a way to turn off the inference engine, I do not know so maybe we can all discuss and perhaps even find a direction y'all may be willing to investigate.
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Thanks for taking the time to explain the intricacies involved. I think your comprehensive assessment of the current situation puts matters into perspective.
I wonder if the situation might be leveraged for the generation of an Ultimate SketchUp Pro 64-bit version (with all the bells and whistles sought by power users) via a Kickstarter-like venture? Have a look at what the power of crowd-funding can produce here, Kickstarter's 10 Biggest Success Stories http://www.cnbc.com/id/48725154
Mike
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@jeff hammond said:
i highly doubt anybody from trimble is going to talk about this anymore.. pretty much anything that can be said about it already has.. at this point, it's either going to be 64bit or not and i don't think the end users have any say in the matter.. up to now, the stance is pretty much "if you want sketchup to be 64bit then too bad"
I agree, it does not look like SketchUp is going the 64bit route anytime soon.
Architosh recently stated that: "As a realtime rendering system (OpenGL-driven) there is no performance benefit for making SketchUp a 64-bit application." and quoted Bacus saying: "While there are increasing numbers of CAD developers offering 64-bit versions of their applications, it really isn’t a given that 64-bit computing (access to more memory) improves their performance.”
Bacus also claims that: "SketchUp won’t run out of system memory until there are tens of millions of polygons in a model, well past the point where any modern graphics card is capable of rendering the scene.”
Link to article @ Architosh. The 32/64bit part is covered at the end on page 2.
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@frederik said:
I suppose you haven't read the entire thread...
As far as I've seen so far, no-one is claiming that 64bit will make SU run any faster...
The primary reason users want to see a 64bit version is the use of i.e. 3rd party integrated render applications, where SU - being 32bit - is the culprit because of the RAM limitation...
But it's also a request to make SU compatible with future computer systems as well as a hope that it will be able to handle high poly models better than what it can today...I have the impression that Bacus is either not aware of this or does not understand the problems as most of his comments point out the performance part of the discussion.
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Thanks for replying.
If nothing else, it's good to know your thoughts on the subject. But why are you so secretive about the future?
It's not like you have released a whole lot of cool new features that the competition would have stolen if they known about it.
I think we all know more about upcoming products from Apple than the tiniest bit about where SketchUp is heading.
As a professional user that is frustrating. "Is the next SU version going to fix [i]"this" problem or should we invest in some other software?" is a question we repeatedly ask our selves.[/i]I'd welcome a serious discussion about what is most problematic with SU for us power users and ways for you to fix those problems.
Now if 64bit version isn't the solution to working with heavy SU files what is?
I've never heard any explanation to your statement that 64 bit isn't the solution.
Could you please tell us what the bottleneck is?Why is it that if I have some heavy geometry in SU all of a sudden some soft edges become hard edges?
Why is loading and saving big scenes take forever?
In Photoshop you can press save and immediately continue to work. All saving is in the background.I could go on ...
I must say that some of John Bacus statements seems like he doesn't understand the importance of some of our wishes. Like his statement that quads isn't necessary.
I honestly don't understand why he is saying this and why he is using this arrogant way of expressing himself.
It's like he doesn't care for our needs. I feel I was a fool to believe that quads was one of the reasons he hired Thomthom.
Quads ARE important and could be incorporated into SU without the average user ever noticing.I feel that if there is to be some kind of discussion the initiative must come from you. Open up a bit!
A discussion, no wish list! We've done that already. -
Very well said Pixero. I think that pretty much sums up how many of us feel after the post-Trimble releases and Bacus' negativity towards power users.
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@Andrew, very much appreciated you took the time to write here.
I guess, the 64bit discussion will be over for now. My concerns about Sketchup's future direction and the steps being considered to help us meet our clients growing demands though are not over.
For a lot of people here, working with Sketchup is a big part of business and thus affecting our time and income. If the same wishlists re-appear after every new release of Sketchup, at some point people can't afford anymore to stick to Sketchup and will switch to another program.
Communication is key, so please if you can, come back more often and share some insight about Sketchup's near future direction and, if possible, post again about our biggest concerns.
kind regards,
Max
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@pixero said:
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.The boring reality of this answer is that there isn't a single bottleneck. It's not as simple as just tweaking a single point in the code and everything runs in instant time.
There are many areas where performance can be improved, no doubt about it. But the discussions are much more fruitful if they are about "what is snow" instead of users discussion various guesses to what technical solution should be applied. Don't be blinded by buzz words as 64bit and dual-core - that's not the only thing that makes an application fast and responsive - far from it.
If you think that these two things (which very often come up) will fix everything then you will be forever disappointed.
If you experience that SketchUp crashes when it's memory usage exceeds ~3-4GB then you do have a real need for 64bit. So far, this really only happens when a third party process like a render engine is running inside of the SketchUp process instead of spawning a separate one.
But if anyone reading this thread thinks 64bit will have any performance impact, forget about it. It simply isn't.Dual core? Most modern computers these days have four cores. Now, for the sake of conversation, lets says that any operation could be split up and run in parallel, the max gain would only be a 4x increase. Consider how slow Explode is on a large terrain model. A 4x increase would not be enough to make that operation fast.
The real gain is made by improving the algorithms and data structures. Good algorithms are the true heros of performance. But there is no one-fit-all. There is no magic bullet.
Performance improvement is a continuous work and I can assure you it is of a high concern within the SketchUp team. But let us keep discussions at a higher level than low level technical level.
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@pixero said:
But why are you so secretive about the future?
It's not just friendly ears that listen...
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@tt_su said:
It's not just friendly ears that listen...
Spock is a member?
You know Spock had 3 ears didn't you? His left ear, his right ear and his final frontier
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@kaas said:
For a lot of people here, working with Sketchup is a big part of business and thus affecting our time and income. If the same wishlists re-appear after every new release of Sketchup, at some point people can't afford anymore to stick to Sketchup and will switch to another program.
Here is my personal take on this, we need to nurture a larger third party developer community around SketchUp using SketchUp as a platform to provide a rich range of tool suites. Given the incredible large and diverse user base the best way to get quality tools for the different user types is to have more professional developers catering to the market. Each free to run their own direction based on their specific target user base.
I wish we where there already, but we still got a good amount of work to do. -
@tt_su said:
@pixero said:
But why are you so secretive about the future?
It's not just friendly ears that listen...
Sorry but I don't buy it. Why can can so many other software companies have a more open relationship with their customers?
It's not like every other 3d software is trying to catch up with SU. Rather the opposite. -
Thomas,
Thanks for also taking the time to respond, but now I feel even more miffed than before.
So there are not a few things, there are many things wrong that is causing us not to be able to use SU like we use other software?
Can we concentrate on the issue of SU buckling and folding under minimal poly levels, is this caused by many little bottlenecks or just one?, can you tell us all the bottlenecks preventing me from having a medium sized model? (medium in in other softwares)
What ever happened to your quads crusade?, I too thought we'd be seeing them in SU by now.
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Oh for crying out loud.... I thought for sure we were past the same old smokescreens.
Look, if SketchUp is meant to be platform for other people to build on then it is a very poor platform that does not allows 3rd party developers the best tools to do thier work. 64-bit is simply a tool SketchUp (as a platform) should be providing to every 3rd party developer.
The idea that 64-bit is relevant to why SketchUp high poly performance is so poor is just misdirection. The real culprit there is primarily the video card and openGL... where if SketchUp were to embrace more advanced technologies the user could see real improvement. However as long as SketchUp is designed for users running cheap integrated graphics chipsets, instead of requiring dedicated workstation graphics like any proper modelling app, this will remain the case. All you need to do is load a heavy scene and disable the fancy viewing options to see dramatic performance improvement... this is all the proof needed to see this in action.
The idea that "converting to 64-bit is too much work" is a valid excuse is beyond rediculous.... what have you actually done in the last 5 years that is so impressive that we should accept such a lame excuse? Stop wasting time designing websites and actually work on the software people are paying for!
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@jason_maranto said:
what have you actually done in the last 5 years that is so impressive that we should accept such a lame excuse?
May I point out that Trimble acquired SketchUp in 2012. During the six years of Google the focus was mainly on Google Earth integration and now much otherwise.
So what about the two last years with Trimble?
Turning the ship around. Changes are happening and as we continue to staff up there will be more noticeable improvements.@solo said:
Thanks for also taking the time to respond, but now I feel even more miffed than before.
Cheer up buddy! I know it's no fun being on the outside trying to peek in, but during the six months I've been on the SketchUp team I've become very positive on the future.
Just because the technical bottleneck is different that the initial assumption doesn't mean it's a bad thing. I only mentioned it because I didn't want people being perpetually disappointed by expecting a technical buzz-word in the release log. Focusing on assumed technical details is clouding the more useful higher level discussion. What are your goals with the tools you use?
@solo said:
So there are not a few things, there are many things wrong that is causing us not to be able to use SU like we use other software?
This is the entry to something that can be interesting. How is it that you use other software and what do you do? Then compared to SketchUp and how you use that?
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@tt_su said:
A 4x increase would not be enough to make that operation fast.
Quite the opposite, a 4x increase would be amazing!
@jason_maranto said:
Look, if SketchUp is meant to be platform for other people to build on then it is a very poor platform that does not allows 3rd party developers the best tools to do thier work. 64-bit is simply a tool SketchUp (as a platform) should be providing to every 3rd party developer.
I often disagree with Jason, but he's got a point here.
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- I have not seen one specific example of model presented showing the problem. I do not mean just the skp file, but all the other settings along with data on the target system showing RAM usage, processes running etc, what graphics, graphics memory and etc. There are many permutation and combinations that can contribute and until the problem is understood I am sure the developers feel they are in a undefined box.
- For the windows users there are many resources available but you have to be willing to take advantage of them. Many of these are same Microsoft uses in their resolution of problems.
- Those who think Trimble should have a nice road map of long range plans are not living in the real world, that info is usually closely help and you will not see any specific detail unless you are a level 2 manager or higher. Those many times will be in 3 to five year long range plans. Reading the base camp notes they have and the scan explorer, ruby begugger etc. release should give one some sense of what those are. With the statement they are staffing up the question in my mind is for what?
- For those rejecting off hand the thoughts John B and Andrew give makes one wonder why you are not working at MS or some other development company. They may not give the answer you want to hear but have the info base you should at least listen too. IMHO they are missing the boat not making better use of the employee badged folks showing on the forum to help answering some issues ,but that goes back to long range plan and man power use. IMHO I would think say a web type conference with a select user set often vs the 2 year base camp show and tell could help to establish what their long range plans should be or even what near term fixes are required.
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