So... here I am looking at a new machine and coming to a circular discussion with myself that a top spec iMac is better for SketchUp and SU based rendering engines than a MacPro; can this be a reality?

Does anyone know of a renderer that takes advantage of the massive power of the dual FirePro cards on the new trashcan Mac Pro? If there aren't then there is no point buying one because SU only uses one CPU core, and the current iMac is actually faster than the Mac Pro on a single core.

You know when you really need a tool and it keeps crashing?

If some kind soul wouldn't mind modelling some 3D beziers for me I'll pay in cake.

What I need is a tight wave line in a circle and one in an 'S' shape.

Any takers cake fans?

I'm probably with you Mike; beats slightly rainy nights round that weird fire pit bar last year eh?

Its a pretty normal upgrade strategy.

As long as you can get good use out of your upgrade fee it's completely fair.

@unknownuser said:

I think I'll be arriving Saturday late. Anyone up for skiing Sunday?

I might be up for a bit of a Ski Sonder; not made any travel plans yet.

Wonder if they will release 2014 at Basecamp?

It's not to do with resolution; I am running a pair of Thunderbolt displays at 2560 x 1440 each

If you look at the screenshot you can see that the OS is anti-alising very well.

I was running SU on the built in display before getting the TB displays and it was running very smoothly, with some small issues with tiny snap points and tool tips.

I attached a screenshot of the built in display.

Interestingly LayOut looks fine!

Yup!

Also make a style with "Color By Layer" ticked.. then you have a very visible idea of what is going on in complicated assemblies.

Just wondering if anyone has anti-alias problems with running a Retina MacBook Pro and a Thunderbolt Display?

I asked support and Jody's response was:

@unknownuser said:

Thanks for your note. I understand you're seeing aliasing when working with SketchUp on an external display connected to your Macbook Pro. In SketchUp all anti-aliasing is handled by the video card with no additional steps that can be taken to adjust this. You'll see much less-antialiasing on the Retina display as its able to modify the display behavior directly but additional monitors will not likely support the same high resolution and appear even more aliased than if you were on a computer that didn't have the Retina display to begin with. Unfortunately the best results will be on the laptop monitor.

Having bought two thunderbolt displays I am kind of left hanging in the breeze! I previously used a 27" iMac and that was fine.

When relinking a SU file in the Document Setup dialogue, I like to drag the file in from a finder window (a general Mac Finder trick), rather than navigate within the dialogue box.

If you navigate this way, so the path of the file is as you would see it if you navigated there normally, and hit Open nothing happens.

@play404 said:

I had this problem of my $2700 MacBook Pro showing jagged lines compared to my $1200 old acer, the osx version of sketchup does not give anti-aliasing options as on windows machines, but after a lot of digging on the inter webs you can force it using this line in the ruby editor:

Test.set_AA_method(4)

Now it looks much better

What are the controls for this command?

If everyone is wearing hats maybe Tom won't.

https://github.com/blog/1633-3d-file-diffs

This looks really cool for seeing the differences in models when working in teams etc.

Does anyone know if someone has written something similar for SketchUP?

Heres a quickie...
... anyone know why I get a lot of frames like this in an H.246 QT render of a quick and dirty solar study?

My work around was to render it as separate .tifs

I slapped the model up in 10min to show someone the effect of the sun on a proposal and it took longer to assemble the rendered .tif files into a video than the model took.

@caronte01 said:

Can you share the file you are working on?

Santiago

Sorry no, it is a commercial project.

As far as machines go; I bought a 17" i7 MacBook Pro on the strength that any of the Apple machines with an integrated graphics card couldn't cope with heavier SketchUP models. I got one of the more senior staff to let me install SketchUP from the web and he was fine with it because he could see that I was serious about buying a machine.

I have uploaded a screen-cap of what I am talking about. Typically it is actually running quite well in this video. When I am doing actual work it sometimes grinds down to a cycle a second or slower, which is really frustrating.

the password is sketchup

Bjanzen; thanks for the reply, but I am already using those methods.

I only render the viewports when totally nessecary and also, on the advice of a programmer friend, use LayOut in a tiny window.

It is incredibly frustrating because it could be such an amazing tool, but at the moment I feel like I am doing technical drawing with a blunt melting crayon.

I have been using Layout for a few projects because I tend to develop projects in Layout then it kinda seems easy to stick it in Layout, but the thing goes so slow it is like working on a 486PC.

When I have a bit more time and am not battling Layout I will do a screencap to demonstrate.

Just to silence the normal reactions; I have used various machines from slower laptops to 8 core i7 Macs and Layout seems the same on all.

I understand that rendering the viewports takes time, but it takes me ages to do anything.

How fast is everyone else using it?

I am referring to London, but I am still keen on somewhere in Europe, maybe somewhere warm .

Come to the most expensive city in Europe!