@utiler said:

Hey Mick, actually I this CPU was quoted to me a little while ago so I should ask about a the i7 3930.
From what it seems the Quadro cards are priced to target professional CAD users where as the GTX cards perform just as well if not better for what SU needs as you'll see by the links I provided.

Don't get me wrong, what you have looks good - I was just wondering if there was something particular that swung your decision, as it's pretty hard trying to make a decision with all the choices out there. Having looked at it more, I think the 3820 isn't really a great option, so for me it seems its between the 2600 and 3930.

With the video card, I figure that I can always buy something like the gtx580 and if it doesn't work out for me then I'm sure someone will buy it off me for a reasonable price, but not sure I could say the same for the quadro. As a side note, it seems the gtx580 is being discontinued... so is already old

Cheers

• Mick

Utiler, this looks like a nice machine... I'm pretty close to putting a system together but was leaning towards an i7-3930 (or maybe come back to a i7-3820), but otherwise very similar to yours. I was wondering how you came to your decision regarding CPU? I've also been bouncing the graphics card thing around - originally Quadro 2000, but now reconsidering the same choices as you. Cheers - Mick

thankyou TIG/mitcorb,

I turned all layers on and unhid all then zoomed to extents. I had a left behind a line at the original coordinates about 7000km away from the origin. I investigated one of my previous models that had the same issue and it was the same thing (a hidden component that I found in the outliner). Once I'd dealt with those, all was good.

Thanks!

• Mick

Thanks for the replies chaps,

The line in my picture is about 2 metres long, so I don't think it's a small scale issue.
It may be a large scale issue: I have imported a points cloud which is far from the origin, then moved everything to the origin. The issue occurred before and after the move to origin (and also after saving/restarting etc).

Cheers

• Mick

Hi everyone,

I've had a few models where the displayed geometry is not quite where SU thinks the endpoints are. For instance, you can see when drawing a line in the attached picture, the first endpoint is reasonably close to where it should be, but the second one is significantly misplaced in relation to the actual line. Similarly, I need to click randomly in the space around the line to actually find and select the line.

I thought it was a graphics card issue, but after turning off "hardware acceleration" it made no difference.

Any suggestions?

thanks

• Mick
  

thanks Mac1, it certainly is good practice to take a disk image of a working system - something I used to do, but complacency has stepped in over the last year or 2. One utility I've read about recently is "sandboxie" which I think may really suit my situation where I'm often trying out all sorts of software/downloads, etc. Cheers - Mick

@mac1 said:

Couple other comments / factoids for you:
.....

OK interesting stuff... thanks. I've sent you a PM with email address if there's more you can send.

The system I'm currently looking at putting together is based on i7-3930 (3.2 GHz), Quadro 2000, WinPro64. I will definitely put in a SSD for the system and programs drive, but probably just a normal HDD for data due to cost. Probably 16Gb memory since RAM is comparatively cheap. I've read your links... to me it seems there isn't a whole that that can be done about devices needing memory - you just have to account for it and be aware of the system limits? Right? I'd be interested in comments about the graphics card (it has openGL 4.0), some say go with a consumer card, others say go with a workstation card because the drivers are better - this has been one of my biggest conundrums.

Heat is one thing that has been really bugging me lately, I have a dell studio laptop that pumps heat out the back like a hairdryer, and I've noticed also the power supply warms up quite significantly. Obviously can't be good for the machine - so getting a laptop cooler for that one, and will make sure the new computer is well cooled.

Cheers

• Mick

Here you go. Cheers - Mick

SU Slide.skp

@mac1 said:

I have personally included the 4Gb switch I my boot init file and have been able to open 340 MB files. That is documented in my postings: a number of post have cited the same LA; the issue of some programs not being able to efficiently use massive parrelel CPU has been around for a number of years and if you read some of the Google post they state it will not use dual cores. Again search some of my post wherein I gave ref to the testing showing thw 4x problem
Why don't you ask the same questions to the poster you cited??

OK thanks, I'm not doubting your information at all, in fact it is very helpful and had in fact bookmarked one page on 4GB Patch that I noticed you'd contributed to, I was just curious if there was one core reference out there that I couldn't find. I'll have a look at your other posts, and I have actually emailed the other author as you suggested but no reply as yet. Thanks - Mick

@mac1 said:

Read all of these http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2008/07/21/3092070.aspx

I was thinking specifically about sketchup... in other words how do we know it is "large block address aware"? How do we know that it only uses 1 processor? that's the sort of thing I meant. Cheers - Mick

@mac1 said:

Ref 64 bit machines. Su does run as a 32 bit but but is large block address aware and as such can use more memory and in fact on my 32 bit P4 I can set the boot init to allow SU to use 3GB memory

OK that's interesting... so how does one come across such information? I've been searching and have only found little scraps of information here and there. Cheers - Mick

Thanks Mitcorb. From what I can work out the gamer type cards are pretty much the same as the pro type cards except the drivers are different (there are other differences but they're not huge). They both support (and speed up) DirectX and OpenGL, etc, but for instance the GTS450 has code optimised for DirectX (i.e. games) where as the equivalent pro card (Quadro 2000) is optimised for OpenGL (i.e. pro graphics). I came across this link http://www.geeks3d.com/20101004/nvidia-quadro-600-and-quadro-2000-pro-versions-of-gt-430-and-gts-450/ which had a few interesting comments below, and found a few other articles along a similar theme. So it seems that for programs such as AutoCAD, it is well worth the extra money for the Quadro, but what about for sketchup? has anyone compared different graphics cards using sketchup?

Thanks

• Mick

Hi,

It's time for a computer upgrade... in terms of specs for sketchup use, I came across this link http://www.vtc.com/products/GoogleSketchUpPro8/Introduction/99227 which seems to have good information - the highlights of which are:

• you don't need a multicore processor for SketchUp and because SketchUp only uses 1 core
• you're better off buying a 1 or 2 core processor that has a high clock speed
• don't worry about purchasing a 64-bit operating system with heaps of RAM as sketchUp operates as a 32-bit application and can only use 2Gb.
• there's really two video cards to consider: ATI FirePro and Nvidia Quadro...go for workstation cards because of the quality of the OpenGL drivers (and other things).

Is all this accurate? Anything to add?

Also relevant to my choice of computer.... at the moment I don't do any rendering, but might in the future. Probably also be using a bit of autocad (civil 3D if anyone here has had the misfortune of using it!) and I deal with very large spreadsheets.

Thanks

• Mick

Baronjutter, have a look here http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=40331&start=15 - go about half way down the second page of the thread and you will see I was doing something similar to what you describe and found a solution that worked for me. Regards - Mick

Hi everyone,

Apparently it used to be possible to save georeferenced image from google earth, so when you go to "Save Image" you could get the JPG aerial photo as well as the KML file giving the bounding coordinates. But from what I can see now with the current version, there's no option to get the KML exported with the image

Does anyone know this can be done?

The add location technique in SU isn't what I'm after.

thanks

• Mick

Gilles thanks heaps - I knew they'd be a way !

and Dave R thanks for pointing out the subtleties that are needed to make it work.

@ Pilou - this is definitely a trippy plugin, I couldn't get it to do what I needed, but I got some interesting results with randomising the components.

Regards

• Mick

Hi sketchers,

OK, sorry for all the questions, and heaps of thanks to those who have helped me with my almost daily queries. I hope you get as much out of this forum as I do.

For today's question.... I'm thinking about how to set up my next model. It's visualising an engineering structure (a fishway for a dam) which will have a series of repeated (say 30) elements (fishway cells) that I plan to draw up as components. There are a number of available options for the design of the fishway cells, and I would like to be able to show these components as scenes for option a) option b) etc. (say 5 options in total). All the components would have the same footprint (say a 3x3m rectangle).

I know I could have different components overlaying each other and use layers to turn them on and off, but there is a possibility that the spacing or arrangement of the components would need to be modified, so I don't want to be adjusting position, etc for 5 different sets of components.

How would you guys manage this problem?

For instance, is it possible to replace all instances of 1 component with another? then replace with another, and another as required? Will the replacement components take on the position/orientation/scaling etc. of the originals?

thanks

• Mick

thankyou Giilles - that worked for me. Cheers - Mick

OK, here's another one...

See the attached file for a simple example. It has 3 instances of a component called "brick". Each brick consists of 3 other components called "bollard", and 1 group (the base).

Double-click the brick component. Select the 3 bollards and the base and "Hide" them. Close the component.

Now go to "Unhide All". Do they reappear? Not for me they don't, even though the component window still lists the correct number of instances.

If "Unhide Last" is available, this works for me, but I found that it gets greyed out, so I can't access it (or my components).

I have a much larger model, where I've hidden elements of the components and just can't get them back. Can anyone help?

thanks

• Mick

hidden component.skp

@gaieus said:

All right. I was away but then the problem seems to have solved itself. Good!

One thing is worth noting here: with the stamp tool, you cannot stamp surfaces that have vertical faces (i.g. curbs). You always need to "cheat" a little bit by adding 1-2 degree deviance from true vertical.

OK thanks Gaieus, that's a good tip. Don't worry, there'll be plenty more questions in the future to attend to

Cheers

• Mick