I recently pulled the trigger and bought an M3 iMac with 16GB RAM and 512 SSD to replace my reliable 2011 21.5 iMac (with i7, 32 RAM and 500 SSD).

I also just installed SketchUp Pro 2024 and it runs amazing on the M3. The models not only look better on Apple silicon, but even with my most complex models SketchUp runs quickly and smoothly whereas on my previous system it could be slow and jerky in response.

I also install Maxwell 5/SketchUp so my new setup would be similar to my old. But the problem is I cannot see the plugin setting on SketchUp to allow me to launch Maxwell (from within SketchUp) as I used to.

Am I missing something? Have looked and looked and cannot see a way to make this work and I followed the install directions exactly. This should work, but it’s not working.

Any insights?

I'm not sure if this is in the right forum, but if not I'm sure the mods can move it to the appropriate one.

I'm currently running SketchUp 8 on my mid 2011 21.5 iMac spec'd with an Intel i7 2600S, 500GB SSD and 32GB RAM. It works well enough for the most part although when my models get to a certain level of complexity SketchUp will sometimes crash when I'm trying to render the model with Maxwell Render. Very annoying.

One issue is my iMac cannot update beyond its current OS High Sierra. This only rears its head whe I try to access a few certain websites, which isn't really an issue because I can easily access those wbsites with my iPad if need be. If my older OS is causing any other issues I'm not aware of it.

Nonetheless after twelve years of excellent trouble free service I think I'm due for an upgrade. I've been considering the current new M1 iMac with 16GB RAM and 512GB-1TB SSD. On the other hand Apple is expected to release an udated M3 iMac sometime later this year with an expected 24=32GB RAM option available.

I have been trying to find reviews and feedback of using SketchUp on a Mac M1, particularly the iMac and preferably optioned with the 16GB RAM option, but I've found very little. I know SketchUp Pro 2023 has been optimized for M1 and I was hoping someone here might be using SketchUp 2023 on an M1 iMac and I would like to know their thoughts on it.

It's a question of whether I should wait or not. Does an M1 iMac with 16GB run well with SketchUp 2023 or is it better to wait for the M3 with 24-32GB? Would an M1 with 16GB be distinctly better than my current setup with 32GB? There is no question the M1 itself is far superior to my old i7, but would the 16GB unified memory be a doengrade from my current 32?

Of course, another possibility is opting for a Mac Studio which is a beast of a machine, but then I have to buy a display monitor and sound system which ends up costing more than a spec'd iMac. I would prefer the iMac.

Any feedback or suggestions welcome. Thanks.

I last opened the file yesterday before everything went poof.

I will make those changes as you have.

Thanks for the suggestions. I haven't been able to recover the file no matter what I've tried.

I'm womdering if it's at all remotely possible for the file to have reverted to an earlier version (of what was saved). it sounds crazy but I wonder because I found a file with the correct name in the place where I believed it most likely to be, but it was missing a lot of work that should have been in it. The model I found was saved in an earlier state.

Anyway with Autosaved files I've found I am able to salvage a great deal of what I thought I'd lost, but certainly not all. So I've gone from thinking I had lost months of work to perhaps a couple of weeks of work.

It's just not fun having to go over ground I've already covered all over again.

Has anyone else had this happen? If so I hope you can be of help.

I'm using Sketchup on an iMac running OS X Mavericks. Today I treid to save a file like I've done countless times before. Only this time I got a message saying "the file could not be saved because it doesn't exist."

What the..????

The next moment SketchUp quit (like it does once in awhile) and after I restarted SketchUp...my file ceased to exist.

I did not delete it. It's not in the trash. It has just disappeared.

I'm more than a little disappointed because that file represents months of work. The thought of trying to recreate exactly what the file contains is daunting because in the least it would mean repeating those months of work.

I checked the Autosave files and what was saved is nowhere near the stage I was at with this missing file. I also tried searching my hard drive to see if somehow the file got saved and/or relocated somewhere else.

Has anyone here had this happen to them? Can the file be recovered somehow?

Any help appreciated.

All my OSX upgrades over the years went smoothly with no problems except Mavericks, and that wrinkle was minor. For some reason it failed to recognize mt wi-fi modem (a Linksys). Nothing I could do could fix it as it seemed to be an issue of compatibility. In the end I got myself an Airport Express and problem solved.

Recently I upgraded to iOs8 for my iPad 2 and I find it's a bit wonky in overall perfprmance. I think it's a touch slower in response than iOs7 and Safari can be slow and unresponsive at times. Obviously bugs that need to be fixed.

None of this has anything to do with Yosemite, but based on what others have said here I'll wait before upgrading.

I'm hesitant to upgrade to Yosemite until I know there won't be any problems with SketchUp.

I've had this problem crop up periodically and it's an enormous pain at times. I figured that the planes were imperfect at some tolerance and I couldn't correct the problem. It doesn't happen all the time, but it happens enough. When it does I try to erase as many of the hidden lines as possible while leaving those that would cause planes to disappear. It's a time consuming pain. I've even erased absolutely everything and started from scratch only to have the hidden lines appear again often enough. Aarrrgh!!!

What I find doubly annoying is cleaning up a model only to find many of the lines reappearing after I saw the model. Undoing Check Validity removes the lines in the model I already erased, but that doesn't solve the issur that those reappearing lines have been saved in the model.

This fall Apple will soon introduce its next OS, Yosemite.

I'm currently running Mavericks and fortunately there was no problem to continue using SketchUp. I always update my OS to stay current, but like last time I'm a bit wary over whether there could be any potential issues regarding SketchUp running on Yosemite if I upgrade.

Any thoughts?

Hi,

A problem just starting for me and I'm stuck. I'm using SketchUp 2013 (free) on an iMac with Mavericks. Yesterday I tried to scale a model down in size and as sometimes happens I got the spinning beachball which usually means it's taking time to execute this operation. It is a complex model so I just chose to leave it running.

After more than an hour I decided to forget it and quit the program and wanted to work on something else. But I can't because now everytime I startup SketchUp it freezes with the spinning beachball of death. I've tried restarting my computer ( this happened once before and the restart fixed it) but that isn't working. I've tried trashing all the SketchUp plist files and that's not working either. I thought of uninstalling SketchUp and reinstalling, but you can't reinstall 2013 because it's been superceded, no?

Does anyone know how to fix this? Any help appreciated.

Thank you.

Doh! OMG, I am now going to crawl away in shameful idocy. How could I have overlooked something so basic?

Thank you very much. Now it works.

I'm using SketchUp 8.0.1 on an a 2 year old iMac and OSX Mavericks. I've had no problems until this seemingly minor glitch.

The upper image doesn't have shadows enabled while the lower image does have shadows enabled. But in both option selections for faces, ground and edges are grayed out and I can't make any changes. As I said before even though the shadows do not display in SketchUp they do appear when I render the model in Maxwell.

Hi. I don't understand what is going on here. When I enable shadws in SketchUp I can see lighting changes on the model, but I'm not seeing any shadows being cast. However, I do see the shadows when I render the model in Maxwell.

This is strange and I don't understand why the program began acting this way. Without seeing the actual shadows being cast within SketchUp it's a pain to decide which setting to use. I'm guessing until I actually render the model.

In the Shadow Settings panel the selections for displaying shadows on faces and on ground are checked off although from edges is not checked off, but the selctions are grayed out and I can't change them. I've tried to find a tool reset to default option, but I can't find any such thing.

I'm stuck and at a loss for what to do.

Any help greatly appreciated.

@cotty said:

Far away objects are one reason for clipping, see the help for more...

Yes, thats the first page I looked out and tried all of those. Nothing worked. When you select Zoom Extents and show all hidden geometry it doesn't reveal guidelines. I had to physically look around to see that errant guideline way off over the horizon, so to speak.

I had a problem and then I managed to fix it and so I thought I'd share it here.

I've been working on a model for the past two weeks when this evening, all of a sudden, I couldn't zoom in parts of my model, more particularly from an "above" angle. I looked up the problem and tried all kinds of solutions to no result.

• Zoom Extents
• Turning perspective off
• Purge unused
• Changing field of view
• My model wasn't oversized or far from the origin.

And a few others I don't recall this moment, but nothing worked. I checked and it wasn't doing it in other windows.

Looking around I found this was a common recurring problem, but none of the fixes offered up worked.

Finally I looked around my workspace and saw a guideline way, WAY off in the distance. I can't for the life of me figure out how that got there, but as soon as I deleted it my problem disappeared and everything went back to normal.

I just thought I'd share this with folks.

@dave r said:

Try using TIG-weld or Recurve to weld the curves.

Thanks! I will try those.

I see this happen on cylinders and domes as well. The saucer was made by forming a shape and extruding it (follow me tool) around a circle, in this case with 360 sides. If I use fewer sides it's a lot more noticeable. There were no inner partitions.

Posted is a quick-and-dirty image to explain my point.

If you look at the edge of the saucer at the front of my model you can see fragmenting or the facets of the circle to create the object. Yes, I did smooth the angles and that circular object is made with 360 sides (to try to minimize this issue), but nonetheless I cannot seem to get rid of those visible facets.

I made this in SketchUp8 and rendered it in Maxwell Render. Is there anything I can do to get rid of those visible facets? Any advice or suggestions appreciated.

I started this discussion so I might as well put in my two cents. My experience with Mavericks so far has been generally positive. In regard to SketchUp I installed Make while keeping SU8 on hand for now. SU8 doesn't seem to run any different for me (as far as I can tell) on Mavericks than it did with Mountain Lion. However, Make does seem to run somewhat better (as far as I can tell) with Mavericks than SU8 does with Mountain Lion.

One odd thing, though. My SketchUcation Store plugin doesn't connect anymore in SU8. I just get a message saying V2 is available, but when I try to click for the update I just get an error message. I can still install extensions the old way by downloading them manually and using the Extensions Manager found in SU Preferences. I've even tried installing the V2 of SketchUcation Store through the Extensions Manager and I still get the error message afterwards when I try to use the plugin. The SketchUcation Store plugin works fine in Make.

^^ Thank you.

@box said:

And there is a plugin for removing internal faces.

This sounds like it could be quite a time saver. I'll look that up.

Of course it's impossible to start off doing everything is the most effective way. At this point I've had limited use and proper understanding of groups and components. But going forward I will try to work with those more in the hopes that it will make things easier overall.