I feel ya. It will take a lot of convincing to get us to pay for Microsoft hardware after this debacle.

Doing a basic regedit as shown in this video may make the GPU play a little nicer: https://youtu.be/k-VWlincHO4

Do whatever you can to turn off Windows 10s rediculous updates (good luck with that) as they often return your machine to what I call "gutless" mode.

You can over-ride some of this with a basic registry edit as shown in this video: https://youtu.be/k-VWlincHO4

Doing so made a big difference for us. Still, everytime a Windows 10 update slips through we have to go through the process again to actually get the power we paid for

I think 2017 is definately an improvement but there are still some display issues.

For example, if you add dimensions directly in Sketchup at a font size that looks reasonable on screen, when you print the font comes out so small you can hardly read it.

We also have to constantly turn plugins off too because they cause a loading error when it takes several seconds to open/close components. Turning certain extensions off resolves the issue for some time until it happens and then randomly turning off another extension temporarily fixes it.

My anecdotal experience is that Windows 10 with its bizarre update system that seems to mess with everything without asking is partially to blame as is the proprietary GPU as is the Hi DPI screen. All three have collided to make a system that is usable but frustratingly not as good as it could be.

The SU 2017 graphics updates (in my understanding) are to handle transparencies better, which they seem to do. I don't know anything about the "Performance Base" version but would say that it doesn't resolve the three issues I mention above.

My personal day to day workhorse is a near four year old HP DV6 on Windows 7 that seems to just work with SU seamlessly on 100mb+ models.

Does anyone have any good examples of extensions for the Layout API?

https://blog.sketchup.com/developer/abcs-layouts-c-api

More problems with the Surface Pro, this time opening/closing groups/components is extremely slow. Everything else in SU runs real fast and snappy but opening and closing groups and components is PAINFUL

Update:

Problems with Sketchup on the Surfacebook i7 with discreet GPU have been ongoing from point-snapping issues because of the screen resolution configuration through to the GPU not running with Sketchup even when set to under Nvidia control panel because an automatic Win10 update has stuffed everything up.

The things are certainly not all they're cracked up to be. At least on a less elegant HP/Lenovo/Acer you can actually access stuff to control. On the SurfaceBook Microsoft has tried to stop the user from fiddling with their configs and it is so annoying.

Example, you have to do a regedit just to get the thing to run at its available power settings: https://youtu.be/k-VWlincHO4

Wait till you try to get it to work on a 2000x3000 MS Surface Book display - the number of unnecessary errors is incredibly frustrating.

Even on old faithful, my four year old laptop, inferencing isn't always 100% accurate and you end up with lines that are actually out by a fraction of a degree

You've bumped resolution settings in windows down to 1920x1080?

3000x2000 caused a lot of issues with SU

Yeah we ended up getting one here - has had multiple issues with display resolution (especially when using additional monitors) but is otherwise pretty good and SU 2016 seems to utilize the graphics card well.

The display issues are a pain but not enough to stop us from buying another.

I have created a component library that has three main attributes that need to be a part of the component for processing purposes.

1. A unique component ID that changes everytime a component is made unique. For this I have used "Description" so that everytime the user hits "Make Unique" the component ID number in "Description" automatically gets appended with #1,#2 etc ensuring that every unique component his it's own unique number.
2. A constant lookup ID that stays the same no matter whether the user hits "Make Unique" or not so that when a report is generated, this number can be used to VLOOKUP another Excel master list to find the additional info for the component irrespective of how it has been changed by the user. I have put this constant ID as a DC attribute because "Name" seems to get wiped everytime I bring a component from the library into a new model (very frustrating).
3. A common name so that the user can immediately see a description of what they are dealing with - I don't want this to be a DC attribute as that would require the user having the DC dialogue open which is unnecessarily complicated. However, putting this information as the component's "Name" under 'entity info' results in the info getting wiped everytime a bring the component into a new model via the components browser.

Does anyone have experience with this and can give me advice how to simplify things and make it as user friendly as possible?