I know I’m not the first to complain, but every time I open a new model and then close or render something with vray it stays on memory and goes to swap, wasting SSD cycles.
Someone needs to implement some garbage collecting.
Please fix this.
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At this point nothing will happen with this regarding SketchUp 2023.
Update to 2026 and see if the problem has been fixed?
(I’m using 2026 and VRay on Tahoe and do not see this…)
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I’m on the 2026 latest version.
I’m on Tahoe! Sketchup version 26.1.188
Update your forum profile. It says you’re using SketchUp 2023 on Windows 11 with an nVidia graphics card.
V-Ray runs as its own process, so it will use memory independently of SketchUp. Depending on how macOS groups processes, it may appear related, but it isn’t necessarily SketchUp “holding onto” that memory.
Swap management isn’t controlled by SketchUp or V-Ray — it’s handled entirely by macOS. If memory pressure increases, the OS will compress memory and then move inactive pages to swap automatically. That behavior is normal and expected.
If you’re consistently seeing 30GB+ memory usage when rendering or working with large models, that’s usually an indication that the workload exceeds your available RAM. In those cases, having more physical RAM is the real solution to reduce swap usage and keep performance smooth.
As for SSD wear — modern SSDs are designed to handle very large write volumes. Under typical creative workloads, the drive will almost certainly outlast the usable life of the machine itself.
If there’s concern about memory not being released after closing models, it would help to confirm:
Does memory pressure stay high in Activity Monitor after quitting V-Ray?Or is it just cached memory that macOS will reclaim when needed?
That distinction matters, because cached memory is not a leak — it’s how macOS optimizes performance.
It happens regardless of using V-ray or not. It happens if you open and close the same or different models within the same Sketchup session. It’s like Sketchup won’t remove the model from memory after you close the window.
Although macOS handles it well, no other software presents this behavior. This smells like a bug.
What you’re describing is usually the result of SketchUp keeping internal resources allocated for reuse within the same session, rather than repeatedly allocating and freeing large blocks of memory every time a model is opened and closed.
Many applications — especially ones working with large geometry datasets — will retain previously allocated memory because releasing it back to the OS and reallocating it again can significantly reduce performance. Instead, they reuse that memory for the next model. From the OS perspective, it still appears as “used,” but internally it’s available for reuse by SketchUp.
macOS will reclaim that memory automatically if another application needs it, so it isn’t permanently unavailable to the system.
The key distinction is whether memory pressure continues to rise indefinitely with each open/close cycle, or whether it stabilizes. If it stabilizes, that’s normal allocator behaviour. A true leak would show continuous growth without leveling off.
If you quit SketchUp entirely and the memory is immediately returned to the system, that also confirms the OS and application are behaving normally.