Looking at some of the issues seen here in the forum, I wonder how many of them are caused by issues with the local software and hardware. I don’t speak Mac but I know Windows can be very finicky about changes made to it at times.
I’ve looked a lot of installs across users on Windows (we don’t have Mac)
I don’t see broken installs or bad hardware causing things - it’s just that LO is resource intensive and CPU speed needs to be considered when deciding what level of detail to export from SKP to LO.
Newer or better hardware doesn’t take the issues away it just pushes them back…so instead of lagging on a 10 page document you can now do 15 pages, or export more geometry.
I see some very common LayOut performance issues that I get asked to help people with. These as follows (in hierarchy 1 = more important).
1 = SketchUp’s highly complex geometry becoming slow when sent to LayOut.
User comment: Why is LO so slow when SU is so fast at displaying the exact same information on screen?
2 = Large numbers of updates and re-renders, including Auto-render being turned on - this is problematic when working on a network drive or slow hard drive, and/or with large SKP + LO files.
User Comment: why is it so slow to update LO when I just moved one line in SketchUp?
3= Use of Hybrid or Vector when rendering high-poly objects.
User Comment: We need hybrid mode or Vector for exports!
My take: When in Hybrid Mode, why doesn’t LO detect softened geometry and render this in Raster mode, while rendering non-softened objects in vector mode?
4 = General misappropriation of saved styles, Hidden /visible geometry, tags, tag styles, scenes, etc.
User Comment: I have so many scenes/styles/tags/overrides to keep track of… Help!
5 = Text and interface being “slow” and “laggy”
User Comment: It feels laggy and I keep making mistakes because the interface is slow/unintuitive/clunky.
You can learn to overcome these “performance” issues if you change your modelling and drafting behavior - and your expectations of the outputs!
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People coming from other software/workplaces… Expectations differ ,eg:
- demand high polygons/edges (including those which come with imported CAD/Scan geometry)
- lots of detail in the sketch up model, and then produce detail views directly from the model (as opposed to dropping in a pre-drawn “Detail”)
- needing to export /import (and repeat that process) for non-sketchup files/geometry (anything from BIM to Rendering workflows)
- needing a highly detailed report or plan-based schedule tool
Some designers spend lots of time researching and drawing standard details for use across a range of similar projects… others invest in components or workflows to modelling all the detail within one (complex) model.
The “grand vision” of the digital, 3d-centric workflow is the latter; prepare one “master” model.
Sketchup’s a good environment in which to do that.
The challenge is documenting it!
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I would add to @AK_SAM 's list the following random items, out of the top of my mind, not related to LO performance:
- Tools and commands that behave differently than Sketchup. Move/Scale/Copy/Rotate/Select live in one tool which implies dragging around and placing a tiny pivot point.
- Dimensions in LO and in Sketchup that are styled differently.
- Not being able to seamlessly retrieve meaningful info from the 3D model into Layout.
- Very difficult to manage elements in a page. Example: Selecting all dimensions only is cumbersome, if they’re not organized by layer;
- Changing the style of all dimensions or all texts
- Managing stacked viewports;
- Export SU layers into DWG, which require stacked viewports.
- Not having plugin or API that developers could ease to boost Layout functionality.
There’s a lot more…