Posts made by Warped9

One thing that's noticeable right off to me is my progression in proficiency from model to model. The topmost images are more recent while the lower images are older. Over time you simply learn how to do new things and how to do things more effectively. One thing I've noticed with SketchUp and Maxwell Render is you need a lot of sides or facets to your curves and circles to eliminate the visible fragmenting. It's very apparent on my two cylindrical designs (including the Flash Gordon rocketship) and less apparent on my more recent works. The last two models I've been working on the fragmenting is hardly noticeable.

If you look at this model you really can't see the fragmenting of curves..or at least it's rather hard to see.

At some point I will revisit some of my older designs and remake them with what I've learned.

Mavericks seems to have done something to my display somehow. It's not a problem, but images seem crisper now, including when working in SketchUp. Everything else is as it was before.

I've installed Mavericks and everything seems to work fine, particularly including SketchUp. So far so good.

I do have one glitch unassociated with SketchUp. The upgrade kicked me off my wi-fi network and I can connect using only the guest connection. But when I enter the password to reconnect to my primary network connection it won't go. I've tried the install disc and nothing seems to work. Argh!!!

In another thread I mentioned I started using SketchUp about a year and a half ago and I use it primarily to render my own SF hardware and spacecraft designs. I have an Intel iMac from 2011, use SketchUp 8 and Maxwell Render. I use Photoshop to put my models into fictional screencap scenes. I thought I'd share a few samples.

A far future starship.

An earlier far future starship.

The Flash Gordon Rocketship from the 1930's serials.

Spaceship Friede from the 1929 film Woman In The Moon.

I've read enough reviews as well as others stating their SketchUp running fine with Mavericks that I've decided to go for it. I'm downloading now.

Still, while the free download and upgrade is nice I miss the old hard disc install which I felt was much faster.

@pbacot said:

Warped9. I haven't thought about for a while (don't have Make), but would any additional exporter in SU2013 pro would be give you an advantage for what you do? For finer lines, export at higher resolution.

Wow! After all this time and I had no idea I could do that. Thanks very much. That alone makes a huge difference. The one glitch is that it seems you have to reset the resolution everytime. It doesn't stay set at the higher resolution. It isn't a big problem, but you have to remember to reset it every time you export a 2D image.

Usually I always like to keep my software and OS up to date, but I use SketchUp practically every day (along with Maxwell Render) and so this is a concern. I've been quite content with Mountain Lion so if there were issues with SketchUp running with Mavericks I could wait until things were ironed out.

That said I've been reading reviews of Mavericks and most of the changes are apparently "under the hood" so to speak in terms of efficiency and performance. Thankfully the user interface has been tweaked but not changed and not as drastically as iOs7 on iPad and iPhone. I'm glad for although my mobile devices do work a bit better I don't care for the look of the iOs7 user interface with its simplistic and cartoony looking icons and such. StilL, I am getting used to it.

I've gotten quite comfortable with SketchUp and am learning to do things I would have found daunting when I first started. I also feel a bit spoiled because after some small frustrations getting started I now feel it would be a chore to learn how to use another 3D program that, to me, seem overly complex.

I know I'm still not using SketchUp to its full potential and that there are likely plugins that could sometimes make things easier for me in certain tasks, but it's obviously a continuous learning process. I'm using the free version with an upgrade of Maxwell Render (it was only $99 at the time) so there are certain Pro functions unavailable to me. One thing I'd really like to be able to do would be to export really nice 2D line drawings/graphics of my models (I design my own science fiction hardware and spacecraft)---the reverse of importing CAD like drawings.

Anyway for now I'll wait to hear more about compatibility before installing Mavericks.

I'm a Mac user and I've been using SketchUp for about a year and a half on OSX Mountain Lion. Recently Apple released their newest OSX upgrade, OSX Mavericks. So before I upgrade I'd like to know if SketchUp will be compatible with Mavericks.

I now try to keep intersections restricted strictly to the faces and edges and/or components needed. But that doesn't solve my other speed problem. Now I have my model made and I just want to mirror it so I can add the two halves together and then add a few asymmetrical details, but all I get is the "spinning beach-ball of death." It's brutally slow and so annoying. I like using Sketchup, but this is quickly becoming unworkable. I've turned off all extras like shadows and edges and whatever else. I've purged unused elements. I've hidden what I don't need. I just want to copy and mirror the model so I can finish it off and render it, but it's just so slow. I've gone away for more than a half hour lunch and when I come back I still see the spinning beach-ball.

Is there nothing that can be done about this? When I check my Activity Monitor it looks like it's using nearly 100% of the CPU (assuming I'm reading it correctly). Is this even normal?

I have an older 1.42GHz eMac with Snow Leopard on it and 2GB RAM, but it isn't convenient for me to install Sketchup 8 onto that and transfer the files. Seems rather silly for me to have to consider going back to that from my current iMac with OSX Lion and 8GB RAM.

I'm new to Sketchup. About a month ago I knew next to nothing about 3D modelling and yet presently I'm already deep into a relatively complex model. I'm mostly interested in using Sketchup to create models of science fiction hardware designs I've drawn 2D using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. No, I still haven't gotten to a CAD program yet. (-:

Anyway I have too baby questions so to speak. Firstly, can I change the background colour in Sketchup? And can anyone tell me why Sketchup can sometimes run soo slow when I'm trying to intersect faces? It doesn't happen all the time, but sometimes it can run for a few minutes before I get results and sometimes it can run for over half an hour before I force quit out of frustration and try again.

Some background: I'm presently using Sketchup 8, but not the Pro version (which I'm considering). I have a new 2.5GHz iMac with over 400GB free on my hard drive and 8GB RAM. I don't have any other programs or unneeded Sketchup panes open when I run into the spinning beach ball of death. And my models are relatively simple and not large in size.