Is RAM or CPU more valuable for all the fabulous photorealistic features on SU for iPad? My current iPad Air 4th gen (4GB RAM, A14 Bionic) crashes when exporting as a movie unless I turn off most of the good-looking features. The model is 30MB, but heavy on textures. Would I be better off replacing it with an M1 iPad Pro with 16GB of RAM, or an M4 iPad Pro with 8GB RAM for the same budget if I want video exports with the nice stuff: photoreal materials, antialiasing, shadows, ambient occlusion.
Dean
You need more ram, having a better chip will help with performance but it still run out of memory if you’re trying to export a big file. You could also save the file to Trimble connect and open it from the web version on a PC with more ram.
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Thanks, Francis - much appreciated. Good idea regarding Trimble connect. So SU running alone can take advantage of 16GB RAM on the bigger iPads?
Just tried using Trimble Connect and the Web version of Sketchup, but it looks like the Web version doesn’t do video exports of scenes. Thanks again for the suggestion, anyway.
You need a Metal 3 compatible device, seems iPad Air 4th gen supports it:
Thanks, Marco. Yes, it works, but crashes when I export scenes as a movie. I’m trying to find out if getting an iPad with 8GB RAM or 16GB RAM might solve the crashes, and if SketchUp can actually make use of 16GB on iPad.
Ops sorry, didn’t catch the issue was the crash while exporting videos.
Did you try whether it crashes with very simple geometry (i.e. a cube) with all the graphic features applied on? Just to understand if it’s a device RAM issue or some kind of bug with the new graphic engine.
Thanks, Marco. That’s a good idea! Just tried, and the scene export is working fine on this iPad Air with a simple cube on a surface with everything turned on - shadows, photo real materials, environment, ambient occlusion. No crashes. So less likely to be a bug.
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So - does anyone know if SU for iPad can make use of 16GB RAM on iPads?
I believe that Apple limit the amount of ram any specific app can use, regardless of how much memory you have.
They increase it from time to time,but I think it is around 10GB that an app like SketchUp has access to,
The memory is used by the OS and the various background services, as well as the GPU in order to show an image on the screen.
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Thanks, Adam. So with the various iPads offering RAM of 6GB, 8GB, or 16GB (costing almost as much as a Mac Studio!), it’s sounding like the 16GB could be worthwhile with SU for photorealistic exports of all except fairly simple models. Does that sound like a fair summary?
My feeling on it would be to buy a MacBook Air or Mac Mini instead.
More bang for your buck without the limitations of SketchUp for iPad and IOS.
Yes - a computer is definitely the reliable way to do it, and I have all that hardware. I’m trying to discover what iPad can do it too now that SU 2025 is so powerful on iPad.
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