Trimble, please reanimate Sketchup

Ranting? What else is new?:smiley:

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Curious - which 3D package handles unlimited geometry on screen?

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Not Autodesk. The other day someone posted about importing a 3D DXF into SketchUp. It was fairly large, about 6M edges. I tried looking at it in TrueView 2021 (practically AutoCad without editing functions). Every little zoom or orbit operation froze the app for minutes. It was sluggish in SketchUp but nowhere near as slow.

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I’ve lost work a couple times, but it was due to my own error, related to saving directly to a cloud-synced folder. Since then, I started using automated backup software (the excellent Bvckup2). I set it up to save a versioned copy of the active project folder, every 15 minutes (unless nothing has changed). This gives me enough peace of mind to save all my work directly in OneDrive (which also serves as a backup and has its own file version history).

I don’t have issues with SketchUp performance (I’m on SketchUp 2021 with a decent PC), but I really wish LayOut was faster – e.g. editing text on a moderately complex document is very laggy. I’ve been tempted to switch to Revu PDF editor, but I would miss the LO/SU integration features.

What is the problem when saving directly cloud-synced folder, such as Dropbox?

I currently save all my work to my OneDrive folder, and it is synced to the cloud. But in the past, I’ve had a couple issues:

  1. Years ago, while using Google Drive, the SketchUp files would be locked as read-only, due to syncing, and it was annoying. Not sure if this still an issue with Google Drive.
  2. A couple of times, I’ve had OneDrive replace new files on my desktop, with older files from my laptop – not sure why exactly. I’ve also had OneDrive integrate new with old in weird ways. So I keep backups of my own, and I try to be diligent about always letting OneDrive sync fully.

An alternative, more complicated strategy I used for a while: Save project files to a non-synced folder, and then have my backup software automatically copy it over to the synced folder.

So, do you still recommend not to save directly to cloud-synced folder? If so, is this only for SketchUp or with any application?

As for Bvckup2 do are you using the Pro or the basic?

Hmm… I save directly to cloud because it’s very convenient – I like to access my data from several different devices. But I don’t completely trust the cloud, or myself, to not make mistakes, so I keep backups on a separate hard drive – backups of each project folder, and also backups of the entire OneDrive folder.

As for Bvckup2, I am using Pro (I bought the license before Pro existed). But in the past I have used the older beta version, which is free forever, and it works fine for basic stuff. The software is capable of all kinds of nutty automation, but the most complicated thing I’ve done with it is saving multiple versions of a project folder (it saves 30, then starts over).

I also configured this backup to ignore any folders called _archive – this keeps the size of the backup small.

Bvckup2 isn’t the easiest to use, but it’s very configurable and well-designed. For example, here’s an article Dynamically adjusting the backup path which explains how to do the above automation. I don’t know if this particular automation is possible with the free beta version or the basic version.

The Pro version offers “delta copying” which is really nice because it only copies the parts of the files which have changed – faster backups, and less wear on your drives. Dropbox, OneDrive, and Amazon, and others use similar tech (block-level sync).

Thank you very much for sharing your experience … and this little app, Bvckup2, looks very interesting. I already downloaded the trial and will test it for 2 weeks, but so far I am liking it and will most often buy the Pro version.

BTW, you said you save your files directly to cloud because it is convenient! This statement confused me a little! Aren’t you getting the same convenience if you save to local folder, then Bvckup2 will do its magic in real time to backup the files to your cloud folder?

I don’t remember why exactly, but the other way felt just a little more complicated and prone to user error.

Well, I just automated the task, so now I am saving my files to local drive, while Bvckup2 automatically and in almost real time, backup the files to my cloud folders, OneDrive and Dropbox at the same time.

After you setup the automation and you don’t interfere, user error should be zero. Anyway, I will test it further for 2 weeks, but so far so good.

Thanks for opening my eyes to such automation :+1:

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Maybe not unlimited (slight exaggeration) but Unreal 5’s ability at handling large geometry is quite impressive… Developer Uses Unreal Engine 5 to Render 10 Billion Polygons... of His Dog Having a Nap - IGN

While going slightly off topic, the patient that needed reanimating comes with a Business plan of Trimble Connect, with unlimited cloudstorage, configurable syncing tools for data of the projects, version history, etc.

Hi Mike,

I wanted to double check the provided information regarding 3D application and multi-core support, so I sent email to Maxon asking if it’s better to go with more cores or with higher clock speed. This is the reply I got:

Most Cinema 4D tools support multithreading and can use more than one core or thread on your CPU. The Standard and Physical render engines are both multithreaded, for example, while Sketch and Toon is still single threaded. To answer your question, though, almost all features in Cinema 4D are now multithreaded and you can expect multithreading to be added to more features, or multithreaded features to replace old single threaded ones, in upcoming feature releases.

So it seems the post you shared about the subject, though informative, was not accurate or at least not up to date as cleary C4D already supports and take advantage of multicore CPU, though not 100% yet. That is just one 3D software, and I expect other 3D applications also supporting multi-cores CPUs, at least to some degree.

Clearly, feature 3D applications will be taking full advantage of multi-cores technology and Trimble should support it in upcoming versions.

Double checking is always good, no doubt some tools like rigging or animating would benefit from multiple cores. But each thread ore core still has to wait a cycle to input the outcome etc.
Every form of animating or righing is still a serial process by laws of physics.

The same problems arise with multiple users working on the same model, like in Revit for instance, if user one decides to move a wall to the left and user two wants it to the right, what will be the result?
There is only one keyboard-stroke our mouse move that determines the endpoint of an edge.

Maybe they will find a way to set up some kind of neural system and implement a parallel system. (AI, where you learn a system how it should model)
Good marketing stuff (‘We also use AI’) :grinning:

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Maybe a “reanimated” forum where one could filter out posts about the subscription model, and Blender, and the generic “not innovating anymore” posts?

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Or you could simply ignore them.

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I understand where you are coming from, but if multi-core does not improve the performance of 3D applications, let say C4D, then why would Maxon waste money and resources on supporting it and even plan to fully support it in further release? It just does make any financial since!

Again, I understand the logic behind the nature of 3D serial process … however technology always evolves, and what was impossible 10 years ago, is a reality today. So maybe Maxon found a way to break that “physics” limitations :wink:

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I have used SketchUp Pro daily for about 14 years and am happy I don’t have to pay the price for autocad like I use to.

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You misunderstood the reply you got from Maxon.

This means that, as in other applications, the rendering engines in Cinema4D are multithreaded. There is nothing new in this. Modelling tools cannot be multithreaded. There is no built-in photorealistic rendering engine in SketchUp.

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