I have not had the type of slow down alot of you are mentioning, especially since using Nick Sonder’s method of breaking down the drawing into his format. I would suggest that as a possible cure to your issues. Hope that helps. I have been a Sketchup user since version 1 from @Last software long before Trimble and have stuck with it.
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@calypso - I started experiencing this very same problem myself starting with Layout 2020. Files that worked fine previously were lagging to such an extent that the Layout files were unusable. The culprit turned out to be components in my SketchUp file that had significant numbers of faces & edges (i.e. tens of thousands) (for example, in one file it was a toilet; in another, a PV panel). Most of these had been downloaded from the 3D warehouse. Once I removed these from the model and replaced them with simple versions, everything started working again.
Note that the SketchUp files themselves were not large – it was just the plane & edge count that was high.
I hope this helps!
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Knowing nothing about what is going on in the LayOut code but having a little experience of development I would surmise that it is “spaghetti” code at the root of such issues.
One way (a bit expensive in manpower and time though) is to scrap it all and start fresh. Do it right from the beginning.
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Yes, I suspect that is what needs to happen. And your sub-clause in brackets explains why it isn’t.
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Same. I’ve had to wait 22 minutes once for a viewport to render in vector. That’s ridiculous.
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Yes Gregor,
“Spaghetti” code indeed!
I have been advocating for some time that the base LayOut code should be rewritten from the ground up …
Yes, expensive in terms of manpower and revenue, but at some point Trimble must face the fact that they can’t keep pasting little patches and grafting features onto this cumbersome software. LayOut isn’t currently worthy of being paired with such a great program like SketchUp!
Trimble - time to step up and bite the bullet! Please?
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Thank you for writing this report. It mirrors my experience with Layout to a tee and I hope SketchUp does something about this soon!!!
got to say @CarlS…fought that fight before. Learned that tag control of these offenders can “manage” this problem. Have a model that I have been working on as a hobby. A massive boat load of objects and there is this one that I modeled that has a massive amount of entities in it. It is a small block in the whole model. It’s tiny really compared to the whole, but when it’s on, it cripples the performance. So I have gone to just keeping that tag off. My working model view runs fine and the only place it is on now is in the scenes. No lag issues. I was just writing this in another thread…tag control of entities is of paramount importance in the performance game. Know what you don’t need on and keep it off as much as possible. It means a much more robust understanding of how to use tags, groups, and components. But that can only mean that we are all smarter with the use of this tool.
As an update to all this, I have now had a chance to use LO2021 a bit more and it does indeed seem to be faster than it was before.
I would like to say that all of LO’s glitches have been ironed out. I’d like to but I can’t as many of them still exist. But it is at least a small tweak in the right direction.
It’s a small patch but a huge improvement. I have been working smoothly lately since the patch.
Now, there are many improvements that should still be implemented, but Layout 2021 feels now the best version I have worked with.
i find it works better, i used to watch it bounce back and fourth 100 times like viewport ping pong before they changed it
Hi everyone,
I wanted to hang back and see if the mid-January update to SketchUp Pro 2021 has helped out @calypso. I’m glad to see it has benefitted a few other posters, but I can’t tell from the thread if calypso has updated.
Regardless, I want @calypso and others to know that my colleagues and I are aware of the poor experience you are having in LayOut. Yes, there may be some ‘best model practices’ you can deploy to improve LayOut’s efficiency. (If you’re willing to DM me a problematic file, we would be happy to advise). But really, there is no excuse we can offer when you experience poor quality in our software.
In addition to an apology – I really am sorry that after years of SketchUp use, some of our customers are getting slower, not faster – I can offer help (we are definitely willing to audit your LO file) and a promise that colleagues of mine are witnessing your experience and that we are doing what we can to improve. In addition to the 2021 patch release, we are actively investigating other improvements to LayOut aimed at improving click-to-click and document navigation performance.
For those of you who’ve read threads like this before on our forum, I am not trying to placate your frustration. I agree with @KeithBrooks’s that it’s important for Trimble to have this feedback and frustration concentrated in a thread like this… especially one that is so cordial and productive. Thank you for sharing your candid feedback with us. I will make sure others at Trimble see it.
Mark
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Mark! wow…this makes my day…not because you mentioned me but because you are here acknowledging the issue. Takes great fortitude to do that as a company and individual. To have you all say that in the forums goes a long way for me. I’m not just mentioning stuff that is going out into the nether. In a time in this country when listening has become a talent of by-gone days, it warms my heart to see you all listening and engaging the conversation.
I might even upgrade…might…
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Hey @Mark thanks for replying. I’m been hanging back waiting to add anything more to the discussion to see if others were having the same issues as me. I did notice a tiny bit of improvement after that mid-January update. Unfortunately it was just a little bit better.
I’ve noticed that some people who aren’t having as many issue seem to be working with smaller SketchUp models than what I tend to build. Layout may run just a tiny bit smoother if I’m only documenting a small one room kitchen project for example. But most of my projects are entire homes with exterior elevations, building sections, interior elevations, and details. So when I’m dealing with a larger amount of detail that requires a larger amount of documentation I still need Layout to work efficiently.
I typically draw my floor plans and lighting plans in CAD and build the house model in SketchUp. Layout is the reason I made the switch from elevations in CAD to elevations in Layout since I design so much in 3D. I just wish it worked as smoothly now as it has in the past. I love these programs and love some of the great improvements since first using SketchUp in 2006. I just hope that these continue to improve.
Thanks so much to everyone on the SketchUp team for listening to the community feedback and looking to help as best you can.
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Thank You Mark,
I appreciate your continued efforts and attention to improving LayOut!
I hope you (and Adam/LayOut team) can deliver more upgrades to the overall speed and performance of this promising software.
Hopefully Trimble will give you the budget and staff you deserve for this needed priority!
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I don’t now which “layout is slow” thread to reply to, so i’ll just use this one.
I’ve been doing a bit of work recently with large neighbourhood-scale plans that include numerous Texts (leader text) created in SketchUp (there’s a good reason for this…)
I noticed when I have lots of leader text in SU, that LayOut responds slowly, particularly when resizing and moving the viewport (an issue that others have raised, often).
I put up with the lag until today when I have a new site plan with 470 faces, each with leader text (giving the area of each face). The lag in LO is insane…20mins to resize a viewport and a long time to select any object or make other changes. LO has “hit the wall”. Strangely, it isn’t even using much CPU power. Even more strangely, rendering and model updates are not slow at all.
So…I wonder… are the users who are experiencing this slow performance in LO also using leader text or other text in SU?
(generally, TBH, I’ve found text in SU to be horrible…can’t display more than a few lines , gets cropped and distorted, and wont export to LO or JPGs. Certain fonts are worse…I think there’s a fundamental issue here in the text handling code)
I would be happy so sacrifice visible lineweights in Layout, (but not in print), and many other cool things like orbiting inside the viewport, just to have speedy viewport updates.Having just a box represent your text when you move it is not a problem. All in for work flow speed, and let us just accept the approximations that comes with that.
ok…so I need to be talked back off the ledge…Layout is making my eyeballs boil today.
Today I’m battling the macOS required floating toolbars…somedays they like to play together in a nice little huddle…some days, like today, they just hate each other and some find a small space off my screen to hide out for while…guh! Please…Trimble?..Please…No, no, no, no…really…Please Trimble?
Hi,
Layout 2021.0.1 was working « normally », but I update to 2021.1 and lagging issues are the worst I encounter with Layout 
The same for you ?
Thanks
Hi Mark,
Layout 2021.0.1 was working +/- good for me with real performance improvements compare to older versions.
BUT, I made the mistake to update to your last version 2021.1 and now layout is unworkable (3x longer for me to draw presentations because of huge lagging issues).
2 questions:
- Does Trimble is aware of this lagging problem ? If yes, when to you plan to fix it ?
- Is there some pc configuration we can change to decrease this lags ? (eg. Nvidia parameters )
Thanks
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