I'm currently using a 2.66GHZ dual core MacBook Pro with 4GB Ram, running OSX Lion. I've used SketchUp on this machine for several years and never had a problem until the latest model of a building i've produced, in SketchUp 8, which i recently upgraded to. It's not a particularly complex model and i've produced more elaborate things in the past which has been fine.

SketchUp has become unusably slow, it literally won't do anything without the rainbow ball of doom appearing. I've tried everything; deleting all the plugins, restarting, using a new file, running just SketchUp. I've been trying to work on this project for a week now and have to retort SketchUp every 5 minutes because it stops responding, which is becoming infuriating.

I think i'm going to install SketchUp 7 again and see if that helps things. Can anyone think of what might be causing this? All other programs (Adobe stuff, various CAD applications, rendering engines etc.) are running fine. Layout also has the same problem if that's relevant.

Any help appreciated.

EDIT: I've just installed SketchUp 7, exactly the same problem which i didn't expect as that always ran fine...

I didn't say "cheap", i said "free"...which is an unbeatable price which i can't afford to rise above at the moment! I've exploded the images and they render fine. I had wanted to use an alpha layer so stop there being a white box around the images but my patience is wearing thin. It works though, thanks very much guys.

Cool, thanks for the speedy and informative responses (as always!). I've moved the images a couple of millimetres forward of the face so it should hopefully recognise them as 'in-front'. Hopefully Kerkythea should be able to render them...i seem to find something it can't do every time i use it, i suppose that's the downfall of using a free engine...though that's a necessity as a poor student. I'll let you know how i get on, thanks again.

I've been trying to import an image (specifically a logo) to put onto a piece of equipment i've drawn in SketchUp. However, when the image is rendered (in Kerkythea) it doesn't appear? Is there a specific way to do this or am i missing something? Any help appreciated.

Thanks for the advice. I've got a problem however, in that when i do the 'mask render' it comes out as a completely black image?

I'm trying to import an image, specifically a logo with a transparent background saved as an alpha channel, for use on a model. In real life it's a sticker on some equipment with the logo on and the rest of the space see-through. When i import as a format with an alpha channel and that SketchUp supports, such as a .psd, the transparent space becomes white. Is there a way around this?

I'm looking to render an object within Kerkythea and require the background to be transparent, saving as a .png with an alpha layer. How can this be done? When i uncheck 'render in background' it just gives a black background.

Ah that'a naff, that seems like such as a standard feature. Tridem, that's a nice rotation, a few jumps up and down but pretty smooth overall, it seems like quite a tricky method though, i'm new to all this you see. What i had planned to do was create a scene in SketchUp as the standard viewpoint, export to Kerkythea and render, then go back to SketchUp and rotate the model, export to Kerkythea and render, etc. I'll let you know how i get on.

I'm rendering a series of images of a SketchUp model within Kerkythea, the final result is intended to be a rotation around the model, with each image being an equal degree increment, for example 9 images each moving 36 degrees around the same axis (the first will be the start and the end image).

Is there a way to specify the exact rotation when moving the model within Kerkythea? I can't find an option to input the figure. Or, will i have to create a scene within SketchUp, move the model within there and export it every time? I was hoping there would be an easy way to do this.

Any help is appreciated.

The wheel looks really good, I'm doing the renders now to test in the flash rotation script. Two questions though, firstly, how many images do people think is best for a good balance between quality loading time? Secondly, is there a way to automatically create a number scenes to render around the same axis, or does it have to be done manually, as in render, move, render, move etc? Could it be done in SketchUp as scenes to be exported as a batch? I'm using Kerkythea if that makes an difference. Thanks again for the help so far.