Layout 2024 performance is awful

[Velina]

I was asked by support to post my feedback here regarding their response to my complaint about layout’s terrible performance.

Here is my email to support…

**Hi there, **

**Layout is so slow that it is just unacceptable and so inefficient to use now that our organization is looking for another program that can be used with SketchUp models. **

**• Resizing a viewport took 1 minute and 23 seconds **
**• Updating the model reference took 1 minute and 29 seconds **

**This is the case with only 1 viewport in a brand new layout and these are also the fastest times out of our 14 seats. Some users clocked in at 7 minutes to update a model reference. **

Those times are +/- a couple of seconds but even with draft mode on, it is just terrible. Can you at least send out a user announcement that tells your customers that this problem has been acknowledged and is being addressed? Only if that is true of course.

Here is their reply…

Hello Velina,

**Thanks for reaching out to SketchUp Support! I am sorry to hear you are experiencing this issue with SketchUp. I will do my best to help you resolve this issue. **

There are a few things that we’ve found can help speed things up for Layout:

1. Go to File > Document Setup > Rendering and switch the editing quality to medium or low. It makes the images look a little fuzzy, but it will still export nicely.

2. Keep the SketchUp Model viewports in Raster rendering mode until you’re ready to export, if possible.

3. Turning off auto-render can help sometimes.

**4. Sometimes a docking station can prevent an external monitor from accessing the “good” graphics card, so check to see if Layout is using your 3D-class graphics card. If you have multiple monitors try only using LayOut on your desktop or laptop main screen, to see if your other monitors are not accessing your good graphics card. **

5. Restart your computer if you haven’t restarted it after installing the latest version of SketchUp and LayOut.

**6. If this is only happening in a few files, make sure that the SketchUp Viewports are as low-poly as possible and have any unnecessary layers turned off. **

In general, the more “agile” the SketchUp model is, the faster Layout can render it. For more information on how to maintain a budget-friendly model:
- Review our Top Tips on Improving Model Performance: https://help.sketchup.com/en/sketchup/improving-performance
**- Check out our Comprehensive Modeling Practices Guide: https://help.sketchup.com/en/sketchup-best-practices-and-applied-principles **

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**Additionally, could you post your feedback in the Feature Request section of our Community Forum? Feature Requests - SketchUp Community **

**Our engineers and product managers look at the forum, and posts like this are much more valued coming from a customer than from me. Our SketchUp Sages also provide expert wisdom and love to comment on new ideas and suggestions. The more users that chime in about features, limitations, workflow and ideas, the more likely it is to happen. **

**Please let me know if you need further assistance with this issue. Your ticket number is 10732159. **

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Regards,
**Rory **

The SketchUp Support Team at Trimble Inc.

My feedback to #1 is that my settings were already set to Low for viewports and Medium for Images.
#2 - I changed viewports to raster and it helped the tiniest bit.
#3 - This used to help with layouts that had almost 30 pages, but not anymore. Right now I am only working with one viewport in a new layout file.
#4 - I tried to see if there was any improvement after restarting my computer and starting layout on my laptop which is the main screen. I also have two 27" Benq external monitors that I use.
I made sure SU and LO are using my 3D-class graphics card and editing LO on my laptop made things slower. It took 2:40 to relink the model when I opened LO and then it took 2:17 to update the model reference after making an edit.
#5 - Done.
#6 - We always try to keep our models as small as possible, but even in our most detailed models we never had this much trouble with the slow and inefficient performance of layout.

As years go on, shouldn’t LO be performing better?

[RLGL]

Post a model to the forum, and ping DaveR so he can look at it and possibly give some advice.

[rtches]

How many pages have your Layout file? I don’t have problems loke that with my LayOut files and I think that 2024 version improved a lot the usability and performance.
As @RLGL says it will be good if you post an example…

[Velina]

Right now the LO is 6 pages, but the last one is blank at the moment.

Here is a link to the files.

Charm Long Upper Level Pantry Option.skp

Thanks everyone for your input. I hope it’s something I can fix.

@DaveR if you are available, can you check out my files to see what can be done to help with the LO performance?

[DaveR]

I started by looking at your SketchUp file and fixing incorrect tag usage.

I purged unused content although there wasn’t much to purge. Then I looked at material image sizes. There are some excessively large ones in the file that just don’t need to be that size. I also note some poor management of materials.There’s no reason to have duplicate textures in order to have horizontal and vertical ones. That just needlessly bloats the file. I expect those came from components you collected from the 3D Warehouse.

Poking through the model I see a lot of stuff that seems to me to be overly detailed for what it does. For example, the electrical outlets in the kitchen. Do they really need the tabs and screws behind the faceplates?

Does the knife block really need holes for knives?

Does the small sink in the kitchen really need the strainer?

Does the large sink really need the rack in the bottom?

Does the garbage disposal unit really need all the detail yours has? Is your model an advertisement for Insinkerator?

Every one of these little details adds “weight” to your model. Every edge and texture has to be processed by LayOut when rendering viewports, especially when rendering them as Hybrid. Your model has loads of geometry that will never be seen and/or adds nothing useful to the story you are telling. If there’s no value added by those small details, they are just a liability. The details you’ve added to your model are the reason for the longer rendering times. You’re modeling methods are making LayOut’s performance awful. Remove the useless details and keep your model under control. You’ll find that rendering goes much faster, then.

Another thing that would help is to eliminate unneeded viewports. Currently in your LO file you have a whole bunch of viewports that aren’t really being used.

Every time you need to update the SketchUp reference those viewports all get rendered, too.

You could leave the viewports rendered as Raster while you are working between SketchUp and LayOut. That would speed things up. Save the Hybrid rendering, if you absolutely need to have Hybrid rendered viewports, until just before export.

Also purge unused from the references list in LO. There’s an unused SketchUp reference. There are also two references with blank paths. Not sure what they are supposed to be but I didn’t see anything in the document that is tied to them.

[Velina]

Thank you. I’ll talk to the developer of Cabinet Sense about the textures and the impact they have on layout. That extension automatically makes vertical and horizontal textures that will properly orientate themselves on Cabinet Sense components. It’s a pretty awesome extension for cabinet makers.

The InSinkErator model is from the warehouse, and the kitchen sinks and faucets are from their respective manufacturers. I knew the garbage disposal was very detailed but it was never a problem before, even in more detailed models.

I just feel like users are accomodating the software more and more.

Best,
Velina

[rtches]

@Velina

Thanks everyone for your input. I hope it’s something I can fix.

I think you must consider all of @DaveR advices that is very valuable.

[DaveR]

@Velina

I just feel like users are accomodating the software more and more.

I guess from my experience looking at models created by others, it seems like the users are adding more and more useless detail to their models. They turn what ought to be short stories into War and Peace. Think of your models as stage scenery. If it doesn’t add to what you are trying to communicate or if the audience can’t see it, leave it out.

Components like the disposal unit and the sinks ought to be cleaned up before being added to your model.

[Velina]

Of course. The extra viewports off to the right side are just there for double checking before I put them onto the next page.

The one above in the pond was just another “test” to see which one I wanted to use on the current page. I know I can see what it looks like in the model, but it looks different to me in LO.

So that’s how I roll.

Customers love detail, the more the better. If they want War and Peace, they get it.
Eventually.

[DaveR]

@Velina

Customers love detail, the more the better. If they want War and Peace, they get it.
Eventually.

And so it’s going to take longer and they are going to pay more.

[ArchyVR]

I completely agree with DaveR, I would add to not use Hybrid for final export and stay with Raster if possible.

Adjust your raster settings for your style so that the final output reads well. With my standard settings here is a screen shot of how your drawing exports to PDF:

The settings I used in SU are:

And in LO

With this change alone, rendering page 5 with all view ports takes about 3 seconds on my system. Rendering all view ports in the entire document takes less than 6 seconds.

Note I set the raster rendering quality to High and I still get fast results.

I imagine if you optimized your model and materials as DaveR mentioned, and worked in Medium Raster rendering mode in LO, you would probably have almost instantaneous updates to your view ports.

If you want to dive a little deeper into forgoing vector and hybrid for Raster, here is another related post:

Long, long wait updating SketchUp into Layout

Hello Sproutsradio, If you have long wait times, I’m assuming you might be using vector or hybrid for some of your SU view-ports. Personally, coming from an Autocad background, I always leaned to vector PDF outputs because I liked the crisp line work as well as the small PDF file sizes, which unfortunately for LO, causes huge delays. I’ve posted several times on this forum with suggestions of how the LO team might be able to speed things up by utilizing a technique to harness the full power o…

And here is one about styles:

Why doesn't SketchUp allow users to set different line-weights on different lines?

I am always a fan for given users more options to 3D Model/2D Draft the way they like and am not one to subscribe that there is only one way to do things, and although I would welcome more user control with line weights similar to how dashed lines have been enabled in SU, the suggestion Anssi makes is a good one. I recently gave up on Vector and Hybrid in LO and spent the time to adjust my styles to get good results with Raster. These are the settings I use: Profiles = 2 (Helps pronounce edges…

(Final Note: For exporting vector based line work for consultants to use as backgrounds, I make a separate Layout file that will use Vector just for that purpose.)

[Velina]

Thank you for the video! That really helps me to see what I need to do.

[ArchyVR]

Happy to help!