I’ve been a long-term user of Pro 2016 but having recently purchased Pro 2020, my line weight appears very heavy and drawings look clumsy. From reading various threads, it appears to have been an issue for a lot of you since 2017 but I can’t see a solution to this?
This thread picks up on it but am unsure what I’m meant to do…
Any help would be much appreciated!
You could experiment with the OpenGL settings in SketchUp’s Preferences.
Make sure your style doesn’t have profiles set heavier than you want. Share a screen shot of what you are seeing and upload the SketchUp file so we can compare. That’ll help sort out whether is your hardware or something else.
Thank you for your quick response Dave, this is a side-by-side screenshot of a drawing previously drawn in SU2016 (on the right) and the same file opened and being used in SU2020. Theres a clear difference in clarity, I think you’ll agree.
In terms of my OpenGL preferences, I’ve got 8x multisample anti-aliasing slectected, fast-feedback and maximum texture size both ticked.
Thank you!
Share the .skp file.
check what Profiles are set too in Style…
john
I thought it worthwhile adding, not only is this the latest SU but also a new 2020 iMac - graphics card is an AMD Radeon Pro 580X. I will be able to check the previous iMac I have been using tomorrow but believe this was also an AMD Radeon so doubt this is the issue?
Could still be the issue. Different graphics card, driver, etc.
Test Copy - kitchen.skp (3.7 MB)
I agree, they do there.
It’s only because I can see a clear difference between images exported from SU2016 on screen compared to those exported from SU2020 now that I assume the reason is SU itself. Being a brand new iMac, I would safely assume the graphics card and 5k Retina display would only render things in a better fashion.
Considering they look fine in SU2020 on my machine, I think you can safely assume that it’s a difference in hardware, not in SketchUp.
Okay, I trust your judgement and thank you for your help.
I shall have to check my previous graphics card and compare to this one.
Unfortunately you are generally at the mercy of the Mac OS for graphics driver updates but you might check to see if there’s any driver updates available anyway.
I’m looking at it on a iMac and the model linework is very crisp…
your v16 image seems to have a different level of detail making the lines appear to be thinner…
can you post the v16 model…
john
I compared your file in both SketchUp 2020 and SketchUp 2016. I had to save your file back to a 2016 version to do that. On 2016, the lines were very slightly sharper and thinner, but not as dramatic as your example. That was with 8x antialiasing in 2020. I changed antialiasing to 0x on 2020 and the files looked identical. antialiasing is not an option on 2016 on Mac.
I have aa at 0 as well…
john
Perhaps the following is related? Desktop versions of SketchUp prior to 2017 used a software-based rendering facility which was not especially aware of high-DPI (or high-resolution) display screens. As a result, edges were drawn using one-pixel thick (thin!) lines. 2016 definitely was drawing beautifully hair-thin lines on my iMac 5K retina display.
Sadly, newer versions of desktop SketchUp have been “advanced” (he says cheekily) to know a bit more about high-resolution displays. As a result, they draw edges with significantly thicker lines perhaps 3 pixels wide, based on a quick screen-zoom-in test on my iMac with SketchUp Pro 2018.
I have gotten used to the coarser lines drawn by SketchUp 2018 (compared to 2016) during the past 6 or 8 months or so, but I still am disappointed by the “improvement” in newer SketchUp versions. (The reason I switched to 2018 is because, for an unknown reason, both 2016 and 2017 began spontaneously crashing within 30 seconds or so of starting up, even when completely idle, even when no model is loaded, even with no extensions. That’s another story, I don’t mean to pursue it in this topic.)
There is a difference, and it’s between SU 2016 and 2020 on the identical hardware and Style settings.
This is on an iMac 27" Retina 5K late 2015 model. Radeon R9 M395 2GB graphics card with standard Apple drivers.
Left hand side, SU2020, opening the file given by the OP above.
Right hand side - SU2016 - same file saved back to v2016.
Styles show Edges, no profiles.
I noticed this earlier - can’t remember which upgrade - possibly between 2016 and 2017, or a year or two later.
I seem to remember it was in response to increasing resolution screens. SU looked too fine to be readable on original Retina and Hi-Res Windows screens. As well as too-fine lines, the inference point highlights were too small to distinguish between types. For the Mac only, there was a fix posted by a user which substituted larger icons for the inference points.
You got there as I was writing this post. That’s what happened.
