The usual complaint ... again

I’ve never had that problem.

Speed has everything to do with how you use software. I often have 4 or more instances of SU open at the same time I have LO open with multiple files.

You’re working away just fine and then BOOM - gone.
No error messages, no warnings, no solutions… just emptiness …and that crushing feeling of time lost.

We get that layout (like all software) has hardware limitations. But simply exiting the program isnt a good response to low memory/cache or complex geometry, or any other predictable workflow. I think the crashes are due to much more than that… OpenGL libraries and such. Our workflow can’t be adapted to overcome such things…we can only minimise the risk. Unfortuantley LayOut doesnt give us very much at all to go on…it litterally requires a trial and error approach to problem solving.

For guidance, other software provides some idea about how to recognise and overcome such limitations and learn how to avoid them:

  • Windows offer hardware checks and a Degub using Crash Logs.
  • Autodesk highlights when VRAM is is low and offers you to disable acceleraton
  • Adobe warns when you are running low on memory
  • Renderers work around hardware limits by rendering in passes, or segments, or reducing details until performance is satisfactory. If errors are encountered (quite common) they will say “element X failed to render and will be invisible in your output”.
  • SketchUp says “this operation appears to be taking a long time - would you like to cancel?”

I happen to be getting LayOut crashes today in a model that uses imported geometry. I’ve simplified, cleaned up and checked everything and it all looks fine… But my 2-page LO document is reliably crashing each time I update the model with Auto-Render turned On.
Something in the model (imported geometry perhaps) is astray. And I have no realistic hope of debugging everything in the SKP model to figure out what it is (it might be invisible).
Fortunatley that setting was one of the things I checked first, so I can work around it, for now. But does that mean LayOut is working well and I just have to learn how to use it “properly” (ie workaround things)?

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I understand the frustration.
Should the Vector and Hybrid rendering options be removed completely? At least the warnings SketchUp issues when using them ought to sound more drastic. Many of the problems seem to arise from using these rendering modes with megaedge models.
Also, the default Display quality setting ought to be set to Low, for the same reason.

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I love this comment. I have read that darn book 'til it’s falling apart. Still looking forward to the day that I can say that.

That is a strange as this is not recommended by any OS SE. Running several instances of the same application is not even allowed, for example, on Unix type OS. Without getting into technical specific details the reason is that it slows down the operation of the whole system, besides draining resources.

Funny you should mention that. I just had 7 separate Foxit Phantom PDF instances open at the same time. Several of them had multiple documents open at the same time.

That is perhaps why people use Windows, not Unix.

Where on earth are you getting this from? Corrupt installs happen all the time. Hell, Colin has suggested uninstall/reinstall on multiple occasions.

Well, when it comes to servers and production rigs such as animation and SFX studios you are wrong. It is mostly UNIX platforms that perform these functions. You are welcome to check these facts. It is readily available just the same as the records of the deaths of people who were vaccinated vs. nonvaccinated, for example. For my part, I have a plenty of colleagues and users who prefer using OS X to Windows. And they are recognised and very successful.

You can claim anything when you pick your data. No SketchUp users use Unix here.

Ok, that is partly Unix. But SketchUp on MacOS has a MDI so for them this discussion is irrelevant.

Not with SU on windows. I literally always have at least 2 instances of SU running. Typically more during CD production.

A per Tag rendering option would be nice. Assets like vegetation or furniture being rendered raster without stacking viewports. Or provide usable templates for starters.
The ‘face me’ component needs a 3D equivalent these days.
Once modelled, turn it into a special object in SketchUp that has no edges that could be inferenced beside it’s bounding box, looks great from all camera positions and distances and above all, render the same in LayOut.

If you don’t need to dimension a leave on a branch, you don’t want all that info in your condoc.
Now, everything is treated the same inside LayOut, wether it are the contours of a building or that nice looking 3d tree…

The EULA is very clear, you may use two devices, generally the desktop at work and the laptop for ‘on the road’. However, it’s not so clear on what a device actually is, for instance an activation of version 2020 and version 2021 counts as two devices, even on the same user account and machine.
And then you got to have a spare activation as well…
Two (or more) instances of one version still counts as one device.

We need a new EULA, I guess.

On macOS, one can launch a second instance of an app using the terminal command

open -n -a <path to app>

-n says open an new instance
-a says open the specified app

I believe there is no way to do this from Finder, so most Mac users wouldn’t know.

Of couse, since as noted earlier macOS uses an app-centric UI, there is usually no reason to do this. In SketchUp or Layout, each file will open as a separate tab.

I would bet that in most of these situations on Windoze there are other underlying issues. A great share of the users is not computer savvy.

I mean with any software. It’s always a possibility that some sector of the file didn’t copy properly, and you get a corrupt install. From games to CAD software, it just happens. Nobody’s fault most of the time.

…I just got my brand new pc(Intel 12700, 64gb Ram, RTX 3080) today and prepared it alongside my current pc. Installed SU and LO and LO is faster. Hower the new pc now is attached to one monitor. My current pc is attached to two monitors. Do multiple monitors affect LO’s speed? Just wondering…

I have seen no difference using one or two monitors.

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I have 3 monitors connected to an RTX2060 and one more connected to the onboard GPU.

Layout is fast.

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