Laptop recommendation for SketchUp Studio 2024

Here is yet another “what laptop should I get” post.
I remember way back at a basecamp in Boulder the SU team talking about the challenge of utilizing multi-core CPUs for sketchup, and I see the odd-meme about one core doing all the work even if you have extra cores available.
Is that still the case?
Should I be looking at the high end GPU as well?
I’ve been on SU on mac for years, and will be upgrading to SU Studio on windows so I can do Vray renders and import point clouds.
What’s the best of the best, and the maybe the 2nd best if I want to use the best of the best from last year?

Alas, drawing your 3D model to the screen is a single process, thus no help in multiple cores. Of course, rarely done one ONLY use SketchUp, no matter how dedicated… multiple cores may help elsewhere…

Also, I’m a Mac guy.

Drawing meaning the rendering of the 3d geometry right?
Do you know if using Vray uses multiple cores, or would that use the GPU?
What about point clouds?

no, drawing is making lines, faces and all. the stuff you do in sketchup. it doesn’t take a lot of CPU or GPU power, but RAM will make it smoother on the other hand.

yes and no. as Vray is attached to sketchup, all the things you’ll do that don’t need a rendering will still use sketchup’s mono thread. stuff like picking a material in vray and applying it, picking a tree and planting its proxy.
if you activate live rendering, or if you start rendering an image, then it’ll use more cores. softwares like rendering engines or video editors can mutli threads, they’ll cut the images and processes into chunks and each core will deal with one.
having a dedicated GPU, especially a Nvidia one, will greatly help.
otherwise (like on a mac) it’s CPU only.

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A few rules of thumb… Newer-gen intel CPUs seem to work really rapidly with SketchUp, in my experience. The actual gigahertz or numbers of cores don’t seem to make a significant difference.

SketchUp 2024 (and Windows 11) seem to love RAM, so 32gb at a minimum, I recommend. I just upgraded to 64gb (LayOut uses a lot of memory).

Rendering could benefit from a GPU with approx 12GB+ VRAM (mid range spec for gaming) and you should be fine. You wont get major performance from a Laptop for rendering because heat becomes an issue and the GPU will throttle down to half-speed or similar. Look for a laptop with excellent cooling (ie a thick laptop with loads of vents).

Point clouds are an interesting one… I’ve been told that an enterprise RTX4000 or (5000 ADA if you can afford it!) it might just work a lot faster with points (because SKP with point clouds is NOT fast, generally speaking!)


However 2024 brings a new challenge - stability.
In the hopes of better stability (fewer bugsplats) I’ve just swapped from an MSI Creator 17" to a HP Zbook.
It hasn’t.

I’d love to know @ateliernab what windows hardware you’re using and how it is that you’re not getting frequent bugsplats like many of us are experiencing. Is it hardware or something else? (could be the HDMI cable I connect to my external monitor?)

a mac. :sunglasses:


My PC is for classes only, and in class I’m not gonna work on a 3M polygon file with 200mb materials and 5 different plugins that radically change the workflow. I have an almost vanilla sketchup on it.
most of the crashes I get are either caused by me (I know how to crash my tools) or the “standard” bugs we already know.
my windows 11 is also quite clean, I turned off / uninstalled anything I didn’t require, any overlay stuff or cortana, I’m using windows defender cause avast was just eating my RAM for nothing more and windows defender it quite enough if you’re not clicking on every weird link you see.
nothing’s in a cloud, no backup system or anything, it’s all on the ssd, I also deactivated the automated compression thing windows does with your files that seems to mess up SU files too.
It’s a hp victus 16", it’s got an i5, maybe 2.7GHz? 32GB RAM and an RTX 3050.

There is lots of good advice in here already but I figure I ought to chime in and make sure that the official requirements are posted just in case you need them.
https://help.sketchup.com/en/sketchup/system-requirements

As far as a brand recommendation, we can’t offer one officially but I can say that you almost want to approach building or selecting a computer for SketchUp like you are looking for a mid range gaming setup. Naturally there are a few differences with a work computer like CPU speed being more important than core count but generally anything that can run a modern AAA game on high settings will be more than enough for SketchUp and allow for a good amount of rendering or extensions too!

Hopefully you can find what you are looking for.

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Just for info: - I work with Point Clouds (500MB - 4GB) daily and speed is never an issue. It amazes me just how large these files can be and how easily SketchUp handles them. I use the Undet plugin which I would thoroughly recommend.

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Does the Undet plugin work better than the official point cloud tool included with SU Studio?

I have used both extensively and I would say there is no comparison. You can create incredibly detailed surface mesh with Undet for starters and the modelling tools are spot on. Its an expensive plugin but you can check out all the details and download a free trial at undet.com

Its windows only but I think you said you were switching across. I would say the Undet plugin was the main reason I started using SketchUp in 2018 and I would struggle to work effectively now without it.

PS - I am in no way connected with Undet :grinning:

If you’re considering a MacBook Pro, I use SketchUp Pro 2024 without any difficulty and I’d even say very smoothly on my MacBook Pro M3 Max, but it’s equipped with 128GB of RAM.
Importantly, the latest MacBook Pro models were shipped in October 2023 with macOS 14 Sonoma which is officially supported by SketchUp Pro 2024, but, since then, macOS 15 Sequoia has been released and is not yet supported by SketchUp.

Thanks - I’m on a macbook air now (on Sequoia!) and it’s working fine, with some bugginess. I didn’t see the note from the SU before I upgraded to Sequoia.
I’m planning to upgrade to Studio, so I need to be on windows.

D’ailleurs, une idée de pourquoi il n’y a pas de de version Mac pour SketchUp Studio ?

Et d’ailleurs, si je devais passer à la version Studio, est-ce qu’une machine virtuelle Windows 11 pourrait suffire ?

la version studio est compatible mac à l’exception de Revit importer et de scan essential.

aucune idée pour scan essential, mais revit importer c’est certainement dû au fait que revit n’est que sur PC donc pas de bibliothèques dispos sur mac.

Sinon Studio contient sketchup pro, compatible mac, et Vray qui tourne aussi sur mac.

edit : d’ailleurs, si tu comptes juste utiliser sketchup + vray, Studio reste un bon deal. studio coute 70€ de moins que prendre sketchup pro + vray séparément.


:uk:
Studio works on mac except 2 tools, revit importer, likely because revit is on PC only so no libraries on mac, and for some reason, scan essential.
Studio contains a normal sketchup pro and Vray, and you can use it on a mac.

edit : Studio is still a good deal even if you don’t plan on using the extensions. it’s 70€ cheaper than buying pro and vray separately.

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