I just updated to SketchUp Pro 2024, and I was so impressed by the new graphics engine (which utilizes the gpu, like its competitors that are utilizing it too), especially since with that, it doesn’t lag anymore when dealing with too many data such as large textures and such; but for some reason, it takes up almost all of my memory (I’m using an 8 gb ram stick on my pc, minimum requirement for it) when doing large projects (such as a rendering of a place) and I’m wondering if that’s normal due to the new engine?
IMHO, 16 gb ram was the min needed for prior versions. I’d get more ram…I run 128 gb ram. You don’t need that but even my 7 year old laptop has 16.
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I agree 8gb is pretty low end for a modeling machine. I would prefer the limitation to be in the hardware than the software. You can always get appropriate hardware and upgrade but its much harder to twist the ears of software devs that dont work for you.
All the programs need a gpu, otherwise you wouldn’t see anything on the screen, even the old OpenGL made use of the gpu, all the APIs make use of the gpu.
All the programs that want to increase the performance, must make it capable of using all the hardware resources available, 8gb of ram was good 10 years ago, nowadays I’d say that 32 is what 8 used to be 10-15 years ago. If you don’t have the hardware required to run the program you can go back to the previous API.
Sketchup and Layout are very powerful applications. Its crazy to think such programs will run on any hardware. Here is my take. Other similar software is a lot more expensive per license so perhaps upgrading your hardware isnt that big a deal. Archicad @ $200 / Month would pay for a very nice new PC in no time. I have seen things slow down in recent years. I can open an old file that ran pretty good on an older version of Sketchup but is slower on a recent version, That’s software development. We have to keep up with the hardware to run the software. Its just that simple.