Increasing the amount of application memory at the expense of system memory isn't likely to address memory problems in Windows XP 32 bit. It isn't the general application paged pool memory that runs out in most cases. Applications that have a Graphical User Interface must allocate GDI OBJECTS and USER OBJECTS (GDI=Graphics Device Interface). There are limits on the number of such objects that may be created by any single process and there is also an overall per session limit. Per session means a session desktop for a logged on user. SketchUp makes heavy use of such objects. Other applications such as Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer are also very heavy users. When the maximum limit for User Object or GDI Objects is approached the system will begin to degrade. It doesn't usually crash but certain functions such as the clipboard and right-click context menus will stop working. You can see here how many objects are being allocated by various processes: [image: process_exp.gif] The only way to recover the ram used by these objects is to close the apps that are using the space available. Internet explorer is particularly bad in this respect. Firefox isn't any better. The best browser that I have tested is Opera. It uses far fewer objects when multiple tabs are open. Existing allocated GDI and USER objects will not be deallocated until all instances of an application are closed. The situation becomes even worse if Terminal Services is running. Then the GDI ram is allocated from the unpaged system pool instead of the general application paged pool and the number of allowable objects drops dramatically. In fact, if Terminal Services is running then using the Large Address switch on XP will make the situation much worse. Bottom line: There is no benefit to using the Large address switch on Windows XP 32 bit and that probably includes the 64 bit version although I am not certain of that. References: Process explorer is a part of the Sysinternals Suite available here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062

@honoluludesktop said: Al, why didn't you ask the client who sent you the log? I almost always get more informed responses from the SketchUcation forum than my users. Also, I sometimes find that someone here knows a lot more about these things than I would have ever hoped for. If the file exists without a bugsplat, then I can look at it before I get a bug splat, and try to find a way to write to it from ruby. If so, it might be a clever way to keep track of what is going on before an unexpected bug splat I found a way to redirect ruby console output to a file. I was just hoping that this might turn out to be a better alternative, and to flush the output - which SketchUp does not do when it gets bug splat. But I am always looking for better ways to write some traces to something in case something goes wrong. See: Trace Ruby Messages (Actually these traces are only useful for other developers. Our software never has bug splats or other bugs )

I have had to base color's black value (shade) on a percentage - 0 to 100 for representational purposes. So 0 black meant 0% of what I was showing, 100% black meant 100% of what I was showing. Also, I also tend to think of the amount black as a percentage. For these 2 reasons, I like to see the black value represented as 100, instead of 255.

@jim said: Dynamic Components have a Copies behavior that, when set to > 0 adds another Component and appends "copy ###". Thanks for the reminder. That was it. [image: asn9_spacecopy1.jpg] Needs to become: [image: KDBC_spacecopy2.jpg] Its too bad they didn't use something more unique than ' copy ', so it wouldn't look the same as a component with 'copy' already in the name.

@thomthom said: @al hart said: But this stopped working. When? I don't know when it stopped working - sometime after I discovered that setting the color to nil did work (several years ago), and this past month when people started reporting bugs. (So of course, I suspected SU 8. But I just tried SU 7 and it fails there as well. So who knows...) The bug was interesting, because the color looked OK in the SketchUp model until you saved and reloaded the model. However, the material editor showed that the material color was not set. When you click reset color it sets the color properly. [image: G9hz_nil_color2.jpg]

Thank you very much, will come in handy!

The file seem to be a config file of SU. @unknownuser said: // NOTE TO USERS: Making modifications to this file is not recommended as it will be overwritten // each time an upgrade is installed. I don't see much useful info in it for us... Possibly it could be used to brand SU - but as the file warns - it'll be overwritten upon SU updates...

Yes, according o the current settings, [img] tags are not allowed in signatures. Existing ones are not "banned" by the system though. Al, please, PM me if you have an idea of changing yours.

or perhaps Al Cohol? [image: HmoU_al-cohol.jpg]

I was trying to get the function name in the trace as well. It turns out that adding this line after every function definition may work well. It displays the rotuine name as well as the file and line number. puts("TRACE: " + caller(1)[0].to_s) if $rps_show_traces

Thanks to all for your help and advice. We chose this one: [image: DaK5_ning_header.jpg] http://irendernxt.com/

Hi, I'm using latest version (from may 2011) and noticed strange problem. When I have plugin wxSU installed and !trace_console.rb, while Sketchup is running - no problems, and CPU usage is as expected. When I try to exit Sketchup,SU window is closed but Sketchup.exe process is not finished, and it uses maximal CPU load (when checked in TaskManager). ########## If only one of these 2 plugins wxSU and !trace_console.rb is installed Sketchup process is ended without problems. It seems that writing to text file is blocked for some reason, and trace file can't be closed. I'm using SU 7.1 and 8, on Windows 7. Marija

Hi Al, Thanks - will do.

All this work trying to redirect output led me to come up with a ruby script which will redirect output, and flush the output file. See: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=31160

The 'draw' colors are OpenGL standard colors only and seem unconnected to the model.materials - so transparency is not available to them anyway. I think that making the color 'red' say [0,0,0] in the model doesn't affect the color 'red' used in the 'draw' methods. A 'color' has always has an 'alpha' value [but it was never used!]. I think that the 'A' transparency in color [R,G,B,A] is a hangover from a much earlier SUp version where it was planned that you applied a 'color' to a face - so you would then need aplha 'A' for its transparency... BUT when 'materials' [allowing texture-images etc] were introduced they contained the transparency property and thereafter the 'color' only needed to be in RGB. So if you add a value for alpha 'A' to a color it is just ignored in its rendering but remembered in its values: but if you add no value it defaults to 255. The API notes say, "color.alpha=i - NOTE: Though documented historically in the Ruby API, this method has never been implemented." Here's the rub... v7. Sketchup::Color.new('white') Color(255, 255, 255, 255) printf("%#x\n", Sketchup::Color.new('white')) 0xffffff Sketchup::Color.new('white').to_a [255, 255, 255, 255] Sketchup::Color.new('white')**.to_i** 16777215 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< NOTE Sketchup::Color.new(255, 255, 255) Color(255, 255, 255, 255) Sketchup::Color.new(255, 255, 255, 255) Color(255, 255, 255, 255) Sketchup::Color.new(255, 255, 255, 123) Color(255, 255, 255, 123) printf("%#x\n", **16777215**) <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< NOTE 0xffffff printf("%#x\n", Sketchup::Color.new(255, 255, 255)) <<<<<<<<<<< NOTE 0xffffff printf("%#x\n", Sketchup::Color.new(255, 255, 255, 255)) 0xffffff printf("%#x\n", Sketchup::Color.new(255, 255, 255, **123**)) 0xffffff Sketchup::Color.new(255, 255, 255, 123).to_i 16777215 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< NOTE [the unused alpha is ignored in the i/hex value] v8. Sketchup::Color.new('white') Color(255, 255, 255, 255) printf("%#x\n", Sketchup::Color.new('white')) 0xffffffff Sketchup::Color.new('white').to_a [255, 255, 255, 255] Sketchup::Color.new('white')**.to_i** 4294967295 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< NOTE Sketchup::Color.new(255, 255, 255) Color(255, 255, 255, 255) Sketchup::Color.new(255, 255, 255, 123) Color(255, 255, 255, 123) printf("%#x\n", **4294967295**) <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< NOTE 0xffffffff printf("%#x\n", Sketchup::Color.new(255, 255, 255)) <<<<<<<<<< NOTE 0xffffffff printf("%#x\n", Sketchup::Color.new(255, 255, 255, 255)) 0xffffffff printf("%#x\n", Sketchup::Color.new(255, 255, 255, **123**)) 0xffffffff Sketchup::Color.new(255, 255, 255, 123).to_i 4294967295 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< NOTE [AGAIN the unused alpha is ignored in the i/hex value] The 'integer value' of the color is being returned as a different value between v7 and v8 BUT the alpha is actually ignored in BOTH versions - so the alpha issue is therefore a red-herring. In v8 it is now a Bignum so face.material=0xffffffff fails - whereas in v7 it's a [ruby:3hoxppyu]Fixnum[/ruby:3hoxppyu] so [ruby:3hoxppyu]face.material=0xffffff[/ruby:3hoxppyu] works ! Somebody broke 'Color'... I'll lodge a v8 bug-report...

I'll have to look a little closer at the video. (I just looked at it, but I might have to watch harder.) I was quite impressed by the Street View stuff at the Base Camp, but as I remember it, he had to apply the street view texture separately to each face on the building he had created. And he had to stretch and dirstort the image to match the face - so it wasn't an automatic process (or am I missing something @unknownuser said: @unknownuser said: Does PhotoMatch, or 3D street view, or whatever, already wrap an image onto surfaces Is that I said second post See video from 0. 45 minutes and following Also, when you use PhotoMatch for a texture, does it then get shaded? If so I will need to save an unshaded image from SketchUp. (I believe I can do this by turning the sun on for shading, setting Light intensity to 0 and Dark intensity to 100)