I am having some trouble with RAM usage since I updated to Sketchup 2025, something that did not happen with 2024. It has become hard to keep Safari open as I work in Sketchup.
I am not sure it is not a problem related to the file I am working on but it has only 17MB.
I am on Mac Sonoma, Mac Mini M1, 16MB RAM.
Thanks.
One possibility is that you have the setting to convert materials to physics based turned on. These materials employ multiple images to generate the effect, which will use more memory, both RAM while running and disc space when the file is saved.
The new graphics engine does things that the old one didn’t - such as having the “photoreal” textures. Each material is made of 3 or 4 material maps, so there is at least 3 or 4 times more GPU memory being used for these.
Your Mac has no GPU memory and it is shared with the main system memory, so in this case the answer could be yes.
I’ve done a few unscientific tests here and the difference is negligible on models not using those things.
For me, it does a bit…
This is the same file, that is fairly heavy on textures.
SketchUp 2025 at the top, 2024 below.
I have all the graphics options turned on, Mac M2, 24GB RAM.
Since I installed 2025 RCO I have been noticing a more intense use of RAM that it was the case with 2024. Now it started to take forever to start and there always appears a notice saying that Sketchup is not responding. More than once I had to force quit it.
I tried to test if what was causing the problem was some recently installed extension. For that I removed all extensions from the Plugins folder. Nothing changed: Sketchup is still taking too long to start, when it starts.
I am on Mac Sonoma and my machine is a Mac Mini M1 with 16MB RAM. It is in very good condition as I run ClenMyMac every other day.
​​​​​​​Any ideas?
do you have the material conversion turned on ?
I have it turned off, haven’t noticed a massive rise of RAM usage. at least not to the point of inconfort…
how big are the files you’re working on, in terms or geometry and megabytes?
not needed. it’s actually counter productive, as you’re “cleaning” files that mac os and the softwares will have to recreate.
couple of times a year, a semester, ok fine.
85MB
By “cleaning” I meant releasing RAM for use with Sketchup.
I found out that keeping Clean MyMac active in the background slows down my Mac. Switching it off improved some of the lagging.
I think there are similar issues with a PC. I was having speed issues and looked into ram usage and after some reading found an APP for the PC called RamMap that allows “Stuck” ram to be cleared. I now do this once in a while. I also found that there is a ton of stuff running all the time. I plan to have a separate computer to handle email, internet and other things and have my Sketchup/ Layout Machine running only those apps.
