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    AndrewS

    @AndrewS

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    Latest posts made by AndrewS

    • RE: SketchUp 2015 is 64bit

      @jeff hammond said:

      aww.. i started reading that as the rest of the sketchUp core team got too high to....
      πŸ’š

      was hoping for something a bit more gossipy
      : )

      πŸ˜† Getting high would make work a lot more interesting, but were that part of our regular development practice, I'm not sure we'd have ever gotten around to fixing the shadow bug, let alone going to 64-bit.

      Come to think of it, maybe when our users get too up in arms about the SketchUp x+1 feature list, we should just raffle off a few trips to one of the places where they can legally go chill out. πŸ˜›

      Andrew

      posted in SketchUp Discussions
      AndrewSA
      AndrewS
    • RE: SketchUp 2015 is 64bit

      @jonfar said:

      when i saw "Sketchup 64bits" i thought i was gonna be able to work with high poly trees and objects like i do with C4D

      We worked for YEARS to dispel the notion that 64-bit SketchUp == faster or more cores. If you go back and read everything our team said about 64-bit migration years ago, the theme was essentially, "by and large, people don't need 64-bit; it's not going to get you anything--unless you do activities that cause you to exhaust your memory, like rendering." We beat that drum over and over and over, but people didn't listen. Now we provided 64-bit and it works exactly like we said it would and people are surprised.

      Take that thought a little further and consider the atmosphere of us discussing this in the planning meetings over the last few years. Someone says, "Hey, guys, I've got an idea! Let's devote the entire engineering team for months on end to implementing a 64-bit SketchUp. What it gets us is something that 98% of our customers don't need, and it'll completely tie up our team to the point where we'll be able to implement precious little else during the major development cycle, but we should totally do it. Because...64-bit!!!"

      We only managed to convince ourselves to do this once we got to the point where a) more of our users started to be affected, b) we could be sure we wouldn't need to support 32-bit on Mac anymore, c) we had enough momentum on this to get it done a little faster than we thought, and d) the rest of the SketchUp core got to high enough performance that we could actually leverage additional memory in a usable way (in the past, SketchUp would often fall to its knees for other reasons before exhausting memory).

      Nevertheless, here we are. 64-bit SketchUp. Everything you wanted, but not what most people needed. πŸ˜›

      Andrew

      posted in SketchUp Discussions
      AndrewSA
      AndrewS
    • RE: SketchUp 2015 is 64bit

      @al hart said:

      Thanks Andrew - I had seen the warning - but still I assumed I was in the right place, since I had gotten there by clicking on the link in the SketchUp 2015 What's new article.

      Al,

      We're pretty excited about how the new knowledge/help center allows us to post different articles for each SketchUp version all under one heading, but the events of this week have also made us aware of how it still needs to be improved. At present, we use a cookie to decide which version of content to show you by default. I don't remember how that cookie gets set, but it's essentially created the first time you come to our help site and indicate which version of SketchUp you're using. The problem becomes trying to understand under what circumstances to change the cookie to reflect a new version. We hope to come up with something better one of these days.

      Andrew

      posted in SketchUp Discussions
      AndrewSA
      AndrewS
    • RE: SketchUp 2015 is 64bit

      @al hart said:

      The SketchUp description of 64 bit says: "The exception to this 32-bit status is that SketchUp for Windows has been built with an exception to allow 64-bit memory usage which allows SketchUp to use more than 4 Gb of RAM."

      Just a moment...

      favicon

      (help.sketchup.com)

      DO you think the second use of the word exception is a mistake, or do you think SketchUp found a way to create a "pseudo" 64-bit - which uses more memory, but isn't really recompiled for 64 bits?

      You're looking at the wrong version of the article--for 2014 instead of 2015. Go back to that article and read the bright red warning at the top that tells you to use the dropdown menu to change to the 2015 article. Then you'll see what you'd expect.

      SketchUp 2015 x64 is absolutely, 100%, without a doubt, compiled for native 64-bit execution. The exception message was in regard to 2013 and 2014.

      Andrew

      posted in SketchUp Discussions
      AndrewSA
      AndrewS
    • RE: Who said SketchUp doesn't need to be 64 bit?

      @airwindsolar said:

      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...

      πŸ˜„

      Obviously these sorts of statements seem ridiculous in retrospect, but the thing is that one never really knows which assumptions will hold true and which ones won't back when the original decisions are made.

      The people who wrote computer BIOSes 30 years ago assumed somebody would come along and eliminate their use of two-digit years before 1999, but then nobody showed up to do it.

      A lot of people saw the explosion of CPU clock speed from 1990 to 2000 and thought it would continue forever, but then one day we suddenly hit a barrier.

      I once got to speak in-person with Vint Cerf when he came to Boulder for a lecture. He told me a funny story about the use of IPv4 addressing on the internet, essentially saying that at the time the original specs were drawn up, although there were a few folks on the engineering team who wanted 64 or 128 bits of address space, when push came to shove, since not a single device had been built yet and the whole thing was experimental anyway, he decided there had been enough arguing and just put his foot down, saying 32 bits were plenty--especially since he didn't think anybody would take his research seriously if the proposals asked for anything greater. Of course, just like with Y2K, nobody came along to fix the shortcoming it until the last minute.

      Like I've alluded to throughout this discussion, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. πŸ˜„

      Andrew

      posted in SketchUp Discussions
      AndrewSA
      AndrewS
    • RE: Who said SketchUp doesn't need to be 64 bit?

      @pixero said:

      it seems they haven't even started converting to 64 bit to future proof SU. ... I would have thought that this process would be ongoing at some low level at least.

      We're doing tons of work to try to shore-up and future-proof SketchUp. I just can't confirm or deny any specifics. See my previous point re: lawyers and Wall St.

      @pixero said:

      The first thing that I thought about when I heard Trimble had bought it was that they really have to ...

      Good, more of that kind of thinking. Certain members of our team have been made into whipping boys because of the decisions people think they've made. Not all of the decisions come from the bottom like we sometimes wish. And luckily, not all of them come down to us from the top, either.

      @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.

      OK, I'll tell you what it is. Ready?

      Surprise, it's not just one thing. Certainly, not even a whole set of things we could very easily explain to our user community.

      The biggest problem SketchUp faces is that it's an incredibly complex, legacy codebase. Having spent the last 13 years of my career working on legacy code, I can tell you that it's a whole lot harder and less glamorous than the preceding several years I spent working on brand-new code before that. Legacy code suffers from all sorts of problems you might expect with anything that ages. Sometimes you're dealing with cleaning up short-sighted decisions that should have never been made. Other times you're putting out fires caused by essentially random and unpredictable problems that no one can foresee at the time the offending elements are created.

      As far as performance is concerned, just as with the 64-bit transition itself, you'll just have to trust me when I say, if there were a magic button, we'd have pushed it already.

      Those who have used SketchUp a long time will remember the big performance boost we gave SketchUp with version 7.1. Well I'll tell you it wasn't for nothing. The gains we got there came from exchanging the entirety of our rendering engine for what we still use today--Intrinsic Alchemy. It was a massive, time-consuming insanely complicated integration to make that happen.

      Some number of the big performance improvements will require really big investments like Alchemy did. As I think Thomthom mentioned, some other number of improvements, such as the increased zoom capacity of LayOut, faster vector rendering in LayOut, and 10x faster shadow rendering in SketchUp, will be realized by improved algorithms--getting something done in a new way that is fundamentally superior to the old method, which either wasn't available, or wasn't thought of, at the time the original element was written.

      We continue to invest in both of those things. Unfortunately, they take time just like everything else, plus we just don't always get to predict the amount of improvement we'll be able to achieve before we begin. πŸ˜„

      @pixero said:

      By the way, how many developers are they? Does anyone know?

      I'm not sure if we're formally allowed to talk about this or not. At Google we were prohibited from revealing these details. I'll ask and see what our management says.

      In the meantime, please consider something perhaps nobody on our team has stated clearly before: that there's a lot more going on in the "SketchUp Team" than just the SketchUp client app. I'm not listing everything or going into detail, but I think our resources are spread out across a lot more areas than people might have previously expected. Here are some examples:

      • SketchUp desktop app
      • LayOut desktop app
      • Core platform
      • Import/Export/Interoperability
      • 3rd Party Dev: API/SDK/Ruby/EW Reviews
      • Infrastructure/Tools/Build/Release/Installers
      • Internationalization/Localization
      • 3D Warehouse
      • Extension Warehouse
      • Mobile Viewer
      • Intra-company Collaborations
      • Trimble's DBO Platform
      • Skunkworks/Secret Badassery/Mind Control
      • QA for all of the above

      @pixero said:

      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.

      This has a bit to do with the way BugSplat is integrated with SketchUp and also how the memory became exhausted. Lots of unpredictable behavior results when memory is severely fragmented or exhausted, whether just within a single process, or on a larger scale. I've opened a bug about your observation.

      Andrew

      posted in SketchUp Discussions
      AndrewSA
      AndrewS
    • RE: Who said SketchUp doesn't need to be 64 bit?

      Hey everybody,

      This is my last response to this thread. The discussion of 64-bit has once again completely exhausted me. Don't expect any more updates on this topic from me.

      After reading back through the whole thread though--and actually, not as much this thread as several others--there's something I think is very important to get off my chest.

      While not directing this at any one poster, I want to make it clear how fed up I am with the finger-pointing and brow-beating that's been allowed to happen way too much on some of these threads. Sure, I'm a fan of free speech. I'm also a big fan of grace and civility in a professional setting.

      In particular, I'm just tired of how often people post negative, derogatory, or otherwise inappropriate messages about the people involved in the engineering or decision-making processes of the SketchUp team. I don't think users have taken to doing this to each other, but trust me I'd be just as disgusted about that if it were the case.

      Just like all of you, those of us on the SketchUp team who participate in these forums do so on our own time and don't find it motivating, fulfilling or helpful to put up with child-like outbursts or general incivility, particularly in what I'd consider to be a community that was created for the express purpose of professional exchange, and especially not in a context where people behave that way while simultaneously trying to get me or my team to listen to or help them in some way.

      If you've ever wondered why so many of us continue to work on the SketchUp team through transitions from @Last to Google and now to Trimble, the reason is because of the people. I'd trust my teammates with my life, let alone with guiding and nurturing a software product. Can you say the same abut your coworkers?

      Regardless of whether you believe me--and if you don't have coworkers like this, then you probably don't believe me--please hear this.

      Levying personal criticisms--those that are aimed at people instead of the product--is a sure-fire way to make me and the rest of my team ignore anything else you have to say.

      Those of us on the SketchUp team want to make the best product we can. We also want our users to have the best experiences they can, and to have a fair bit to do with guiding the future direction of the product, within the realistic constraints of us needing to balance the desires of a great many different stakeholders in this endeavor.

      Concerns, suggestions, bugs, problems, and questions about SketchUp? Keep them coming all day long. That's how we get better.

      Implications, complaints, criticisms and commentary about the character of the individual people on the other end of your keyboard? Keep them to yourself.

      If you wonder why so few of us still actively post on SketchUcation, look no further than this. Too many of my friends got tired of having to sort through character assassinations and tirades questioning the motivations of their coworkers, which they took as a sign that their participation was no longer desired. If it keeps up, I'll assume the same.

      Let's all be better to each other. Thanks for your consideration.

      Andrew

      posted in SketchUp Discussions
      AndrewSA
      AndrewS
    • RE: Who said SketchUp doesn't need to be 64 bit?

      @jeff hammond said:

      i'm pretty sure if there were a magic button which the suTeam could press and sketchup were suddenly 64bit, they'd all push it.. without hesitation.

      Winner, winner, chicken dinner. You're 100% right; we'd have hit it a while ago, no hesitation. Look, there's no ideological argument here that's causing us to say, "no, never!" There are just real technical hurdles and other priorities competing with each other all the time. We have to do our best to work it all out.

      @jeff hammond said:

      so if that is in fact true, everything which comes afterwards "benefits are minimal" and/or "performance may actually suffer" etc.. it just comes off as excusey sounding ...

      Exactly. There's an inverse relationship between the length of time someone wants something and their ability to be satisfied by the reasons why they can't have it. After a while, anger and pessimism win over, no matter how accurate, true, or reasonable the explanations may be.

      Andrew

      posted in SketchUp Discussions
      AndrewSA
      AndrewS
    • RE: Who said SketchUp doesn't need to be 64 bit?

      @solo said:

      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.

      Solo,

      This is exactly the kind of thing we've done with our surveys in the past, with only varying levels of success.

      What we need to know before we begin investigating performance problems is that people are doing everything they can to follow our previous guidelines about making SketchUp work as well as possible with high-poly models, etc.. Only then can we fairly evaluate the feedback about what kinds of operations are getting people stuck. We need to see consistently and repeatably that under the controlled circumstances we've suggested, the bottlenecks exist <wherever-they-are>. We need to get a really good idea for not just the fact that some operation is a problem, but more importantly, to know the frequencies with which those problems occur. That's what allows us to put together a comprehensive plan to deal with those things that will make the most difference--those items on the critical path, in order of severity, as dictated by overall impact.

      In fact, that's exactly what we do with BugSplat. All of the crashes are prioritized by number and frequency of occurrence. When we address them, we do so in that order. That's why you've heard so many people talk about SketchUp crashing less often than ever before.

      The problem we've had to this point is that generally, we get a lot of people who cruise the forums and the internet and pick up on buzzwords like "multi-core" and "64-bit" and then instead of following our suggestions for how to use the software and working to give us good feedback on where their limitations are like I've described above, they just come back at us and throw the buzzwords around without doing anything helpful.

      For instance, just at this last basecamp, when I asked someone for what I just wrote above, he responded by trying to dictate his own process. He said, "No, it's not my job to do that; I'm paying for Pro and it doesn't work like I want, so that's your job to fix." He said, "Implement 64-bit and multi-core and xyz and then once you're done, you'll see all my problems are solved."

      I see that all the time and it does us absolutely no good.

      What we need is more people being really cooperative and forthcoming about helping us figure out exactly "what", and fewer people concerned about the "how." Our job is to figure out the "how" after we have a clear idea of "what," not the other way around.

      Always asking for "how" is just a recipe for disaster: Either we give you nothing but the "how" because that's what you insisted we do, though it doesn't actually do anything to satisfy, or we do our damnedest to figure out the "what" on our own and implement an appropriate "how", only to find that the "what" we did isn't the as important as the "what" we didn't.

      And believe me when I say that at least half of the time people think they're giving us a "what", they're actually giving a "how"; not necessarily to be obstinate, but because they don't actually realize their proposed improvement actually dictates a particular implementation.

      I think the issue for the immediate moment though is that we've done a reasonable job of collecting quite a bit of "what" and are in various stages of working through that stuff. The progress just never seems fast enough to satisfy. Plus all the while, we continue to have to try to quell the storms of people demanding their own "how".

      One of the ideas we've kicked around in the past is trying to create a sort of monitoring utility inside of SketchUp that we could use under some circumstances to try to collect really good data of the sort we need to figure out exactly where the problems are coming from. The problem is that it's a bit too much like Schrodinger's box, where the impact of running tools to observe the problems actually masks what's really happening by changing the timing and overall speed. Whatever the case may be, please trust me when I say we're always interested in trying to improve performance, although we simply can't sacrifice everything else to get it.

      Andrew

      posted in SketchUp Discussions
      AndrewSA
      AndrewS
    • RE: Who said SketchUp doesn't need to be 64 bit?

      @driven said:

      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, I can't think of a single one of our Mac developers here who would disagree with that sentiment. Carbon has well overstayed its welcome. It's all just a matter of time and priorities.

      Andrew

      posted in SketchUp Discussions
      AndrewSA
      AndrewS