Sketchup2018 viewport performance issue

Technical Problems SketchUp
1

I’m working on a project with point clouds sized 0.5M-1M points represented as construction points. This works well in Sketchup 2017. There is, however, a significant viewport performance drop in Sketchup 2018.

Here’s a snippet adding 1M construction points to illustrate the problem:

mod = Sketchup.active_model
ents = mod.entities
mod.start_operation("Add cPoints", true)
side = 300.m
side_pts = 100
dd = side / (side_pts - 1)

(0..side_pts - 1).each { |x|
  (0..side_pts - 1).each { |y|
    (0..side_pts - 1).each { |z|
      ents.add_cpoint(Geom::Point3d.new(x * dd, y * dd, z * dd))
}}}
mod.commit_operation

I see the following viewport performance relations:

  1. Skp2017 > Skp 2018 (no matter what graphic settings are used)
  2. Skp2018 Intel graphics > Skp2018 GeForce GTX 1050

You would expect these relations to be the exact opposite. Does anyone know what’s going on?

2

How do you determine which graphic card is being used by SketchUp ?
In SketchUp? (Window>Preferences>OpenGL>Graphic Card details)
Or in the Control Panel (NVIDIA)

3

I use the Nvidia control panel to assign graphics (Intel or GeForce) and then confirm the assignment in Sketchup. Sketchup has no problems recognizing the graphics card and I use the latest drivers for the GTX1050 (388.31). The problem is that something seems wonky in 2018 for even on Intel graphics the performance is much better in 2017.

4

Caul, your code won’t even run on my mac without locking up the entire computer…

I tweaked it to find the locking point and at about 400,000 points the viewport goes solid black and then the computer locks… [ unless I’m quick ]

The lock happens around the same time and the viewport goes black with or without my view_refresh, but a least it gives me some warning…

mod = Sketchup.active_model
ents = mod.entities
side = 300.m
side_pts = 100
pts = []
dd = side / (side_pts - 1)

(0..side_pts - 1).each { |x|
  (0..side_pts - 1).each { |y|
    (0..side_pts - 1).each { |z|
     pts << [x * dd, y * dd, z * dd]
}}}

view = mod.active_view

mod.start_operation("Add cPoints", true)
count = 0
# I adjust this upwards until the lock...
pts[0..299999].each do|i|
  count += 1
  ents.add_cpoint(i)
  if count.modulo(1000) == 0
    view.refresh #&& view.zoom_extents
  end
end
mod.commit_operation

I’ve seen this with bulk operations on my mac’s in the past, where I had to ‘chunk’ the geometry generation for it to all complete…

this appears to be a cpu overload that wipes out the graphics…

john

5

Thanks for trying out the snippet, but the actual generation of the points is not the issue, it works well on my windows machine (Dell xps 9560), not sure why that is not the case on mac. The purpose of the snippet was just to generate a model with 1M points to illustrate the difference between skp2017 and 2018 on viewport performance. I load my point clouds from file and have no problem working with 1M points in skp 2017; pan, zoom and rotate all perform reasonably fast. On skp 2018 I have a big performance drop which makes it very hard and tedious to navigate the model.

6

I see a notifiable difference on my machine as well. SU2017 is sluggish, but SU2018 is unusable.
I’ll ping the core team with this thread.

1 Like
7

Thanks !! Finally someone who comes with the same conclusion !!

I work on pretty big files (theaters) and I already asked users on sketchucation about my concern, but no one seemed to agree or even bothered answering.

Orbiting around my models became very jerky with sketchup 2018 and for the first time I had to modify default antialiasing (x4 → 0) to make it (only a bit) more comfortable.

I hope they will find why and fix it !

8

I agree. I am having similar performance issues with SU 2018. I typically run 2017 at 16x anti-aliasing and have no trouble. 2018 seems to slow down with the same models even when I am only using 4x anti-aliasing.

9

I confirm that this performance issue is live in Sketchup 2018 RC4.

  1. Viewport rendering of an identical set of cpoints is approximately 5 to 10 times slower in Sketchup 2018 compared to Sketchup 2017.

  2. Viewport rendering of an identical set of cpoints is approximately 2 to 4 times slower on a graphics card (Nvidia Geforce 840m) than on integrated graphics (Intel Core i7 4500U).

These two performance issues are immediately noticeable as soon as you start working with real-world cpoint data sets, where millions of cpoints is just a snack.

Thank you @ThomThom for pinging the core team.

10

Logged as SU-38300

1 Like
11

I’m using SU for massive Site Plan model. I just download SU2018 and realized that I won’t be able to use it. It’s simply unsuable. Check the vids. 2008 compare to 2017 in a simply orbit/zoom action. In 2018, the screen freeze for many seconds.

I’m on Win7 64, Graphic card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670

Hum! I try to upload the vids but it won’t works. Too big maybe?!

12

Hi all, I was wondering if anyone have development on that situation.

I’ve tested this graphic problem on many of my files. The problem of being unusable only happen on very very large files. (Im willing to send a dropbox link if anyone would like to test my drawing) I’ve tried large architecture project even with terrain (10 000sq ft timberframe house on a 4 acres land) and it was fine. So any drawings smaller than is ok. It’s more when I draw site plan for Circus, CirqueduSoleil or amusement park kinda style model. The problem, to be precise, is that I get a massive delay when orbiting (about 10secs) and the image slowly come back to life by first showing every in proxy box mode, then very low rez shapes then the final shape with no texture, then finally the texture. If I do another orbit movement, the all story start again for another 5 to 10 secs.

LITTLE UPDATE HERE: Due to this lack of performance I finally decide to jump in the hoop and get Windows 10. The free update promotion was finishing last monday anyway. So I did a fresh install of Win10pro with a fresh install of SU2018pro, and the graphic lack of performance has REALLY improved. I still have the proxy re-generate and delay when orbiting but it’s not 5-10 sec but less than a sec. which means is totally bearable. That fix my big problem of having to keep SU2017 for some large client files and this is GREAT news… But this said, there is still a big difference (lack) in graphic performance in SU2018 compare to SU2017. I’m sure this will improve with the next update.

Thanks for your reply guys.

13

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