SketchUp has been Crashing for the Dumbest of Reasons

Technical Problems
, ,
1

Alright. This really making me really angry! :angry: SketchUp has been crashing for the dumbest of reasons lately, and it is really setting me back in locomotive model production. Here are some reasons that it crashes:

Opening SU’s internal Components window (Window<Components). This will happen at random times, and it does not matter what has happened prior to the crash.

Hiding Entities: This is not just hiding entities by holding Shift while the Eraser tool is selected, but it also happens when hiding entities selected in Entity Info, where SketchUp will crash when the checkbox is ticked. If there are any methods of hiding entities, it is likely that this will cause a model to crash, too. This happens at any given time, and it does not matter what has been done prior to the crash.

Repetitive Commands: If it is erasing edges, making components, copying entities, drawing rectangles, or whatever it is that is done repetitively, it will crash after a few minutes of that repetitive action. For instance, rotating several entities in place (let’s say 20, or so). SketchUp will crash upon a repeat, or similar action, to the previous step. This will happen regardless of what was happening before the initiation of the “string of repetitive tasks”.

I’d like to call upon these issues, because these are some reasons that SketchUp crashes, and I couldn’t help but notice how often this happens, because it would happen nearly every few days, especially when I’m least expecting it. If the SketchUp team could take a look at these issues, I would love to see some insight on how these could be fixed, or whether or not these problems have happened before. Again, this is extremely frustrating, and other people show frustration when SketchUp does crash.

Note: All of these issues listed are here because every time SketchUp crashed, I would be doing these exact things.

2

Are you getting bug splats when these crashes happen? Are you sending them in?

1 Like
3

I get BugSplatReporter every time. Yes, I send the error reports.

1 Like
4

Are you sending the Bug Splats with something that identifies they came from you? Maybe one of the team like @jbacus would have time to look at the reports and give you some idea of what is causing them.

5

I send the error reports with my email address. Hopefully he can look at these. I am a bit frustrated after losing a locomotive I designed, today. (Silly me for not saving it, after working on it for only 30 minutes!). Where are the crash reports saved?

6

He might look up your reports if he has time. As a Make user you’ll have to be patient.

I understand it’s frustrating but you ought to know by now that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to skip saving the file.

Maybe in the meantime you should take a breather from your hobby and go get some fresh air or something.

1 Like
7

Well, I’m not sure saving every so often where I’m spending more time waiting for the model to actually save than drawing and editing is economical, and that is what I would have to do to save everything I have from a crash. I feel like once SU2017 went out of support, all of these bugs started popping out, and I was kind of hoping for an SU Make 2018, but then I was sad to discover that SU Make was discontinued. All I’m saying is SU Make 2019 may not be a bad investment. It may also give a chance to make a more reliable SketchUp.

8

Hi,

Your assortment of activities is really wide here. Trying to view this from the perspective of finding some thread of commonality between all of them leaves me wondering how big your model is.

Can you report back on what you see when you look at the info listed in the Statistics panel. >Windows >Model Info >Statistics.

9

Alright. I forgot to clarify that each of these would usually be taking place separately. Like, at some point into the model, I’ll just open the components window and it will crash, or I’ll just be hiding a couple of entities in any random point in a model and it will crash. File size is not a factor in crashing. It can happen if the model is a simple cube, or a giant 200MB city model. I often use statistics to Fix Problems and Purge Unused, but this didn’t help. But again, I never execute these actions all in one model, all at once.

10

Try and narrow it down to something specific, like your example in your first post. Does rotating something 20 times always crash SketchUp?

Try disabling all your extensions and trying that again, to see if it still crashes. If it doesn’t crash, you’d have to try and identify the problem extension.

1 Like
11

Rotation does not always crash SketchUp, however, repetitive commands, keystrokes, etc. crashes SketchUp often enough for me to be suspicious about it. I can’t narrow it down, because any form of repetitive functions seems to crash it, whether it would be moving something over and over again, or constantly purging unused items. Anything repetitive.

My first post is a list of problems I faced before I got my extensions, and I am still facing them now.

12
Edges 255740
Faces 113145
Component Instances 769
Guides 0
Guide Points 0
Groups 34
Images 0
3d Polylines 0
Section Planes 0
Dimensions 0
Text 0
Classification Types 0
Classified Entities 0
Component Definitions 93
Layers 1
Materials 37
Styles 1

This model is a small one consisting of one diesel locomotive I tried to paint today.

13

Hmmmm… SketchUp 2017 Make didn’t get modified after the release of SketchUp 2018 so there’d be no correlation.

14

I guess once I found out that SU2017 stopped being supported, I noticed the bugs more, or at least they’ve been happening to me, continually. These are issues I’ve faced since SU2016. Does keeping SketchUp open while your computer sleeps have anything to do with it? Also, has SketchUp had any “start from scratch” updates aside from the SU Free conversion?

15

How about uploading a file that crashes all the time. This will tell us if we cannot get it to crash your computer may be the root of the issues, possibly the video drivers

16

It’s never a single file. All of the listed items above could occur in any file at any given time. I guess from that perspective it could be caused by a number of things, since the data varies greatly from model to model. I can’t imagine why else it would crashes except for when entities are hidden in any method, and when the components window is opened from Window<Components.

17

I see you are on a Mac. I know there have been OS issues with some versions. Being on a PC I have no paid much attention to the version issue. Search the forum or get the attention of @DaveR. He speaks both Mac and PC

18

One thing to avoid doing with SketchUp on a Mac is using hot corners to cycle through drawings. From my experience, it sometimes crashes SketchUp… Especially when done repetitively. So now I just avoid using hot corners in SketchUp.

19

If you mean switching between SketchUp’s open windows with a hot corner (I use bottom left of screen) for ‘Application Windows’, I’ve never seen that cause a crash in SketchUp or any other application. I don’t think it’d be any different from using ⌘` to cycle between windows of an open application and that’s never caused problems for me either.

I switched to OS X (from Mac OS 9) in 2001 when 10.1 came out, so that’s about 16 1/2 years with no crashes cycling windows so far…

If that is causing crashing for you, there’s something else wrong with your system.

20

I wonder if it’s because you use SketchUp Pro, but I use SketchUp Make. Also, I don’t have an NVIDIA graphics card like you do. I use an Intel HD Graphics 4000 graphics card. I think SketchUp recommends NVIDIA, but it seems to run fine on my system… Aside from rare crashes.

I noticed CameronTrain has an Intel HD graphics card too. Are we getting crashes because of our graphics card?