Terrible Move

Off Topic
275

Yeah, I suppose much of what you say is correct. ARM processors running a WINE derivative on Linux to be able to emulate a MAC sounds very slow.

But, if they stay the course for the next couple of years with Intel for their more powerful machines, then SketchUp app should work okay-- just not on the newer ARM based laptops.

My guess is it will still require Trimble to refactor and recompile the source code at some point. Not always that easy especially considering all the dependencies it’s bound to have (Ruby one of the major ones).

276

Huh? Not really sure what that means…

277

I think, this is the result of 7 years by Trimble of very small evolution, and the segmentation of SketchUp on 3 versions, the increase of prices (before the forced subscription). So customers have to pay for this ?

278

Great reply, thanks…appreciate your time in responding.

As any user knows, lag in 3d modelling makes things pretty much torture. It completely ruins the user experience. The desktop app turns things into wireframe when orbit speed drops below a certain point, which keeps it fluid.

I doubt trimble are having financial troubles but they purchased a “non profit” app and need to turn it into a “for profit” app.

Any chance you can send me a link to your model and I’ll see how it runs in my browser (edge or chrome) on my hardware (a range of options from basic to very fast)? It doesn’t seem that large or complex to me.

…But i am not a typical user of Sketchup. My typical models are reaonsably large. I tried loading this into SketchUp Free but it just crashed (“it looks like we’re having issues”).
Capture

1 Like
279

Lol yeah, I don’t think I’ve made a model quite that complex yet. Looks like mine was still small enough to load into Sketchup Free. I’d rather not upload my models to share (I’m paranoid, please understand), but a close equivalent you can try out is Castelia City on the 3D warehouse. I had to duplicate the model at least 5 times before I started seeing similar results in the web version (Not enough small objects to generate wire frames or kill textures though). My buildings pack a considerably larger amount of detail (IE, I’m actually making windows, not using textures for windows), so that attributes to the lag.

Unfortunately can’t give you a mecha equivalent to check out… my models feature an inner frame and all the parts are made “solid,” so that drastically increases the face count where if I didn’t care about that, I could probably just cut out the additional faces and it’d run just fine in the free version.

I’ll lay out my system specifications here to give you an idea of what I’m running currently. My system’s about six years old at this point, with the only recent addition in the last few years being the GPU.

Processor: Intel Core i7-4790k @ 4.00GHz
RAM: 24 GB (A weird number I know, I need to get another 2x8GB as opposed to a current 2x8GB and my 2x4GB, just been lazy).
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070

It’s a gaming computer, and I usually don’t see any trouble. Rather than “disappearing” I guess I should’ve said “wire frames” appear to keep it more “fluid” like you said, but it wasn’t fluid at all when they appeared in Sketchup Free, was still a laggy experience. Usually doesn’t occur in Sketchup Pro until I start adding in the mecha or other objects, like vehicles, for taking scenic photos.

280

They say going to ARM will provide better performance. Is that just for word processors?

281

Not according to Apple. They showed some examples in yesterday’s keynote. There was Lightroom, Photoshop, MS Word, Excel. They showed a game, Shadow of the Tomb Raider running smoothly after being translated to ARM at install time. Not even compiled for ARM, translated at install time. There was a scene in Maya with 6 million polygons running smoothly. This was also translated and not written for ARM. If it can run that, I don’t think SketchUp would be a problem. This was all on an existing chip, the one in the iPad Pros, not some future chip they’re no doubt working on.

If you just want to watch the bit about ARM, click the ‘Mac’ mark at 1:25:57.

So no, not just word processors. I thought this would just be the MacBook Airs going ARM, but it’s ALL Macs over the next two years.

4 Likes
282

As you can surmise, Apple will choose only the best examples that work.

The problem with the example that you shared, is that Maya primarily uses the GPU to render all of the polygons in a scene. On the other hand, SketchUp relies significantly on the CPU to render the viewport.

So it’s not at all apples to oranges. In one case you are using processors outside of apples ARM family, in the other case you’re using a much slower CPU emulation mode.

3 Likes
283

Older versions of SketchUp are still free,

284

Of course they’re not going to show you anything that makes it look slow or broken.

The development machine doesn’t contain any graphics card other than the graphics capabilities of the A12Z. So that machine wouldn’t have had any processors outside of Apple’s ARM family. I know next to nothing about Maya, but if Maya relies on the GPU then it must have been using Apple’s GPU on the A12Z. They might have cheated with an eGPU, but those machines don’t have Thunderbolt either.

I wasn’t really meaning that you’d only every be able to run SketchUp under emulation. I was being optimistic that SketchUp would eventually support ARM based Macs natively in the future. The rosetta translation was an impressive demo as if it can run that fast when translated, it can’t be any slower running native code.

285

Every modern computer has some sort of GPU. Even the Raspberry Pi

Find out which graphics processor is in use on your MacBook Pro - Apple Support.

286

ARM CPUs have long reached a data width of 64 bits, now the connection of a lot of RAM, a lot of computing cores and PCI Express are no longer a problem. Thunderbolt 3 could skip the ARM Macs and start with USB 4, its specifications Include Thunderbolt 3. It is initially unclear whether existing external graphics chips or graphics cards with PCIe can be seamlessly connected to ARM processors. So far, Apple has only announced Macs in which only processors with integrated GPUs work. There are also no PCs or Windows notebooks with ARM processors and dedicated graphics.
Apple has not only designed its A-series processors itself, but for some years now also the built-in graphics units. These should already be on a level with the integrated GPUs from Intel.

So far, however, the well-known ARM processors have not been able to achieve clock speeds as high as Intel’s CPUs. While ARM chips achieve a base clock between 2 and 3 GHz, Intel manages over 4 GHz, with TurboBoost over 5 GHz. In addition, many x86 CPUs with Hyper-Threading can virtually double the number of cores. Additional computing units (SIMD) such as SSE, AVX, AVX2 and AVX-512 expand the x86 instruction set and thus accelerate the encoding of certain video formats, for example.

Over the years, Apple has designed everything that is necessary for a system-on-a-chip that can power a Macbook or an iMac.
Even though Apple emphasized that there will be new iMacs with Intel chips and that existing x86-based systems in general should receive long software support,
Cupertino wants to move ahead quickly with the switch to ARM-based Apple Silicon: the changeover should be completed in two years.
Apple has long since ported its own applications from x86 to ARM, so Final Cut Pro with 4K playback from three streams runs smoothly on Apple Silicon.
Third-party applications such as Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop or Microsoft’s Office 365 have also already been adapted.
Developers can create suitable binaries with Xcode 12 and Universal 2, which means the app runs on Apple Silicon and Intel x86.
The transition phase is also to be facilitated by a dynamic binary translation called Rosetta 2: According to Apple, it is so powerful
that games with translated x86 code also run, as an example Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2019) was shown in 1080p with metal graphics interface under MacOS.
It remains open whether Apple uses silicon with an integrated GPU or whether the chip has been coupled with a dedicated graphics card.

A virtualization of other operating systems should also be possible, whereby Apple showed a preliminary version of Parallels for ARM and a Linux VM (Debian 10).
A strong argument should also be that iOS and iPadOS apps will run on Apple Silicon under MacOS.

2 Likes
287

This hasn’t anything to do with SketchUp, but I just gotta tell you all about my poor neighbors. They recently built themselves a new house using rented tools. When the project was complete, they discovered that while they could look at their house in pictures, they couldn’t get into it (much less make any changes) unless they continued to rent the tools. Needless to say, they are incensed. They never would have used those tools had they known. I coulda told them.

3 Likes
288

I watched the entire WWDC keynote on Monday and I appreciate your accurate representation of what has (so-far) been revealed about the Mac Intel > Apple Silicon(ARM) transition.

But as fascinating as this discussion is, it is clearly OT in this thread… so @colin @Aaron can a moderator hive this topic off into a Corner Bar / Apple ARM Transition thread?

3 Likes
289

I should get @jody to show me how to split things off some time. Hopefully he can do that for an ARM discussion.

One interesting thing is that at no point was A12Z described as ARM, even if it is. I was tempted to make a pun about it, but decided it would be too riscy.

6 Likes
290

Thanks for the chuckle :smile:

And ya, a lot of tech pundits made than same observation. One of the best takes I’ve seen on that is from Daniel Eran Dilger at Apple Insider:

I’m normally not a fan of DED as he’s a little too unrelenting fan-boi for my taste, but his insights here are worth a read.

291

:roll_eyes:

294

Yes, the Pi uses a system on a chip which includes a GPU section and so does Apple’s A12Z. That demo was not running on a GPU ‘outside Apple’s ARM family’ it was running on the GPU part of Apple’s A12Z chip.

Remembering how quickly they obsoleted the PowerMac G5s by cutting off PowerPC support, I’m a bit worried how long they’ll really support Intel Macs in the future, despite Tim Cook’s talk of supporting them for ‘many years to come’ or something like that.

This might be what kills off SketchUp 2020 for those on perpetual licences in the future when they buy a new ARM Mac and Apple has got bored of supporting Rosetta 2.

2 Likes
295

I didn’t know that. Thanks for making it clear.

1 Like
296

I see there has been a lot more discussion on this topic, since I last posted, and I found your post worthy of response. You mentioned that an increased cost for Pro users (removal of perpetual licensing maintenance) seemed to be the way forward for Trimble to stay profitable, and I get that, because all businesses have to look at the bottom line, every so often, through their fiscal year, so for the consumer in having to make a choice of which path to follow going forward, and if the pay option is the only feasible way to utilize software that gains them the net benefit of staying in business as well, there are still plenty of choices out there.

In my own personal situation, I’ve paid for SU, for the past three years, out of my own pocket (initial cost of the software license + yearly maintenance fees), which worked into my budget quite well and I was happy with that arrangement. My reasoning behind this, can be likened to the old addage that you have to “spend money to make money”, but in my case it was more of “spend money to become more marketable”. I use SU for both work and hobby, and up until now, have enjoyed the way it’s provided a feasible outlet for my own design work. Now that this option is no longer offered, and given that Trimble has made it known what the new cost will be, via subscription, I gave myself enough time to re-evaluate my situation, and found a solution.

I will no longer be moving forward with SU, despite the investment I’ve already put forth. Like the old saying goes “fish or cut bait”, I’ve opted to move to another option, not just because of Trimble’s move to a subscription model from the perpetual licensing, but more so due to the fact that SU’s historical “progression” of new features and fixes in their core product has left me somewhat unimpressed. I said before that to evaluate the decision to stick with SU is based on value versus cost. We all keep paying a decent amount of money each year, and in return, we aren’t exactly getting much more new features that truly benefit us in the long run. Given the arguments from last year, for this year’s update, is a prime indicator of disappointment among the users, even though Trimble has stated that they listen to the community.

All in all, it is solely up to Trimble in how they want their company to grow and develop, which is fine, just as it is understood that the user can opt out at any time, and go elsewhere if they feel that their specific needs aren’t met. I do see how Trimble is trying to compete with the other competition, but it’s all in how they are going about it. In a perfect world, it would be impressive to see Trimble come out on top, with the increased capital on hand to increase development and ultimately provide the community with everything they wish for, but it’s not a perfect world and the gears of progress wait for no one. Those of us who have been patient, may have truly lost hope that SU will finally bring forth, worthy features that justify the increased costs.

I won’t mention where I’ve gone to now (out of respect to Trimble and the community), but I will say that it isn’t any free version software, and while this may sound hypocritical, I did opt for the subscription based software. What I am using now, compared to SU, is lightyears ahead and after my investigations and testing, find it to be exactly what I’d been needing for a long time. In fact, I’m still kicking myself for not using it years ago. Plenty of native tools at my disposal, compared to the vast amount of plugins necessary in SU to achieve the same results. Native rendering is also a big factor, which I found impressive too. Lastly, stability is a big sticking point, so with all that said, I am a happy camper. I did, however, get in on it during a sale, so that helped in the long run, opting for a 3-year license, just for the fact that if I waited, the sale would disappear and the increased cost would force me to stay where I am. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not necessarily throwing shade at SU per say, but what I am saying is that when you break down cost versus value, there is a big divide between the two developers, and as I have to look out for myself, knowing that I have to keep the design work flowing, it was an obvious decision to abandon one for another.

I won’t completely stop using SU, but I will step off the proverbial train for a while, and see just how green the grass is on the other side of the fence.

5 Likes