Hello. New to forum. Recently upgraded to Ventura and Sketchup 2023 for Mac. I was hoping it would resolve my memory issues and it has to some extent but not if I want to open other applications. I keep running out of memory. My sketchup file is huge at 800 MB but it is taking almost 28 GB of my 64 GB memory. If I happen to leave the file open overnight it gobbles up to 47GB of memory and my system runs out of memory. Is it normal for sketchup pro to take up this quantity of memory for a large file?
800MB is enormous for a SketchUp file. Is much of the space consumed by large images and/or textures, or by geometry (edges and faces)? I would be curious to know what are the total edge and face count statistics reported by the Model Info window. Either way, such a large SKP file will consume a lot of memory at run-time in the SketchUp application.
With that said, memory consumption should not increase spontaneously, which is how I interpret your description of the result from leaving SketchUp running (but idle as far as you know) overnight.
I am aware it is huge with lots of image textures. I used to have it on my MacBookpro 2014 32GB with some issues which is why I upgraded the new Mac. I am not really asking for a fix to reduce the file. I can take the time to go through all the fixes to reduce it and or split it up. I thought I had bought enough memory. I was planning to go talk to the apple guys about it but before they bounce me back and say it’s a sketchup issue I wanted to see if 28GB was reasonable for a 800 MB file…and alot of edges.
Woah.
14million edges is a crazy amount.
I think that’s the long and short of it.
As you are using 2023 , 800mb is a compressed file, so the file itself is going to be well over 1GB.
I’d imagine at this point your CPU and GPU are running into issues too as with such a complex file those will be working overdrive.
There has to be some optimisation there that can be done to de-bloat that and reduce the memory useage.
I do like a challenge - if you can share it, I’ll happily take a look.
1 Like
I’ll add that many (most?) softwares are like goldfishes. Give them a bigger bowl, they’ll grow up.
Some softwares, thinking of Photoshop right now, allow the user to cap the RAM use. SU don’t.
So in your case, you have a huge file, very very heavy, on a machine with a lot of RAM. not really surprised it’s taking its space.
How long have you been working when taking this screenshot ? 28Gb immediately at start would be a bit much, but after a few hours, yeah, sure. It’s just 45% of your available RAM after all.
I didn’t suggest it. 
You confirmed the presence of large images and very high numbers of edges and faces, both of which naturally contribute to memory usage. I can’t say whether 28GB is an appropriate amount of memory for such a model, sorry. For reference, I sometimes work with SKP models that are about 280MB in size in the pre-zipped SKP era (2018), which have ~10 million of edges and faces but no images. On my Mac such a model consumes perhaps 3GB of memory, from what I recall.
What caught my eye when reading your original post was the implication that memory usage is increasing spontaneously while SketchUp is apparently idle - your overnight comment. If memory is really increasing overnight, that indicates a problem to me. SketchUp will gradually consume increasing amounts of memory during a long active editing session, but it shouldn’t consume increasing memory while idle. Maybe an extension is doing something in the background? Does the SketchUp process consume any significant amount of CPU time when the GUI is idle (in other words, when you are not doing anything interactive with SketchUp) and SketchUp is not rendering an animation or etc.? I would expect nearly zero CPU usage when SketchUp is idle.
One known culprit with a memory leak was an older version of the Mac driver for 3D Connexion devices.
Ok Thanks.That gives me a better idea of size of file vs memory usage. I have an appointment with some “geniuses” to discuss the memory gobbling issue while idle. Unfortunately Enscape my rendering software only works with sketchup 2022 and when I upgraded to Ventura I can no longer use it. I figured that the memory usage would go down significantly with no Enscape, but it is still really high. Thanks again for the comments from everyone…but as I said, I am not looking to fix the file.
Again, how long would you say it took SU to eat 28 Gb?
Because if it’s 10 min, then it’s a lot, and quick.
If you’re telling me you’ve been working on it 4-5h, then you might consider quit / reopen when having a break / leaving for the day. That way at least you’ll protect yourself from memory leaks.
But again, looking at it in term of percentage, 44% of the RAM isn’t that scary.
I have observed that once SketchUp allocates memory, it never gives it back to the system. For example, if I open a large model, close that one and open a small model, the memory stays at the high-water mark from the large model until I restart SU. As a result, it is normal for the memory to usage to grow during use, but at some point it ought to stabilize.
As @Anssi pointed out, the 3DConnexion drivers on Mac used to have a severe memory leak, but that was fixed several versions ago and no longer happens. So unless the OP has one of their devices and hasn’t updated the drivers in a few years, that is not a likely cause.
I’m having similar issues to the OP. Sketchup reaches a point where it’s eaten up 25-60gb of memory, and something will then force the beachball of death to start spinning.
It not the model - its under 100mb in size, and it seems to be occurring as a result of panning / circling around the objects you’re designing / working on. The more you orbit, pan and zoom in and out, the faster and higher the memory starts being eaten up.
In my models’ case it, for example, is a fairly open plan house design, with two small rooms aside a large open lounge dining kitchen area, all enclosed in a 12m x 12m footprint. It’s a very straightforward model, yet it fails constantly because of this.
As an example; I’ve opened sketchup and memory usage is around 4gb. If I pan and orbit, zoom and move around a bit, and edit just two walls, it skyrockets to about 30gb. in less than 5 minutes.
I’m almost at the point where I’m giving up. I have a supposedly very capable Mac Studio, but im running into this on all the models I’m working on and in.
Various questions popped to mind:
Do you have a 3DConnexion space mouse, and if so have you installed the latest driver?
Does this happen with all models or just some? If just one or a few can you share an example so people here can see what happens for them?
If you look at model info statistics, what are the edge and face counts for the model?
If you create a dead-simple model such as a rectangle, does this happen? How much memory does SketchUp use in that case (4GB seems like quite a lot unless the model is very complex or contains multiple enormous images).
Have you imported components from the 3DWarehouse? Some of them are very poorly made.
What extensions do you have installed?
One more question: what is your SketchUp version??
Please update your forum profile with that information, it helps us to help you!!
I got back to googling this issue, and ended up in the same darn thread I posted on 6 months ago. It’s still doing it. Multiple models, multiple computers, different versions of the software, different versions of MacOS.
its simply that the more you pan zoom and orbit a model, and change the layers, materials, etc. it starts growing and growing and growing until it fails / freezes or just crashes.
I’ve not found any solution to it beyond saving regularly and closing the program down every few hours while working with it (when in a heavy work session / stint).
Have you tried upgrading your OS ?
According to your profile you are using 10.11.4
I am using 13.6.6 on my 2017 Macbook Pro without any problem.
There are two causes to SU memory leaks that I’ve run into:
-
Problems with the 3D Connexion driver/extension. Do you use a SpaceMouse?
-
I’ve found it necessary in my version (SU19) to remember to close the blank model that launches on load. When I leave that open in the background it seems to cause memory leaks.
That seems very strange! Only the currently active model should be receiving any changes; an inactive one should just sit there. If you reopen the initial blank model tab, what happens?
It is strange for sure! But I read that fix somewhere (here or on Sketchucation) and tried it and it seems to work.
Once I sorted my 3DX driver issues, the only times I had memory leaks where when I inadvertently forgot to close the initial model window and would 15-30 minutes later get a system warning about running out of drive space (due to virtual memory inflation).
I’m not sure what you mean by re-open the initial blank model tab? If I open a new blank model after closing the initial one there’s no issue.
Unless you close the initial blank model, it should still appear as a tab at the top of the SketchUp view window after you open another model. You can look at it again by clicking that tab. And, of course, if you closed it, it can’t possibly be the cause of a memory leak (but you knew that).
Ya, the issue is when I leave it open. By the time I learn of the memory leak I have to close SU and relaunch. Clicking back into the open tab doesn’t release the memory.