I’m having a recurring problem with SU 2024 on a new Macbook system that I’ve never had before in ten years of sketchup. The move tool, and sometimes other tools, like the tape measure, are not snapping to points that I expect them to. Having used sketchup for ten years, I’m pretty fluent as I draw, and the fact that I seem to be missing this feature, the ability for the tool to say, recognize a corner and put a little blue or green dot on it so I know I’m on the right point, is really frustrating. The only solution I’ve come up with so far is to copy everything and start a new document, and then it seems to work better for a while–but it comes back. These aren’t huge files (712kB?), and I’ve purged things I’m not using. I have 32 gigabytes of ram in this computer, so there really shouldn’t be an issue. And the graphics are working fine, even with my space mouse. Any thoughts, anyone? I’ll try to attach a video of what it’s doing-- you can see at the end, it finally recognizes the corner I’ve been hoevering over.
Are you using the new graphics engine or the old? Try switching back and forth to see if it makes a difference.
Thanks for replying…I am using the new graphics engine, but I will try switching back to the old one and update.
Can anyone explain, in fairly lay terms, what the difference is, and why there are these incompatibility problems with macs?
The new graphics engine is a unified interface that sits atop the native DirectX12 on Windows and atop the native Metal on Mac. The devs created this in part so they could use the same top-level code on both OS. It also brings noticeably faster performance on most computers, but has some glitches that are still being sorted out, particularly on Apple silicon. The classic graphics engine is the OpenGL that SketchUp used since its origin. It is more stable because of the long time to iron out issues, but outdated and slower than the new engine.
yeah, we get it, you’re frustrated and ranting around.
do you plan on posting more of these useless messages in the future or do you plan on being part of the community ?
@ateliernab thanks for bringing that up. Joined 2 days ago and already ranting all over the forum.
Update— I think the classic graphic engine did bad things to the anti-aliasing, I noticed a lot more “staircasing,” which I didn’t love. I switched back to the new engine. It seems fine for a while as I draw, but if I work on a file for any length of time, it still does strange things. For example, the mouse pointer will appear as the select tool instead of draw or move, even if draw or move is selected and being used. This makes things difficult, because the pointer doesn’t behave the same way as the draw or move tool. If I select back and forth, eventually the right tool graphic appears as the mouse, and seems to snap to points as it used to normally. But it’s not reliable. My settings also give me two options for the new graphics engine— default or M3. I chose M3, because that’s my system, but I don’t know what default would be, other than the system I have in the computer. Is this just a duplicate choice? And please, people, don’t use this thread to complain… let’s not ruin this very useful forum like we ruined Facebook. I have no doubt the people at sketchup are literally working every day to make the program better, and it is an extraordinary program that has made my career possible.
Ok, this is kind of getting annoying now… I don’t know that it’s a graphics problem at all. I’ve had this problem happen with both the old and new graphics engine. See videos. In the first video, you can see how I’m frantically moving the arc tool around trying to get it to latch on to the corner. That’s with the new engine. In the second video, with the old engine, I can’t get the draw tool to find edges, and then I can’t get follow me to recognize the face I’m hovering over. You can see that there’s a lot more Staircasing. Any other ideas besides graphic engine for this inability of tools to find points as they used to?
M3 Macs have issues, pretty sure @colin could comment on best settings until they release a patch.
I’ve been having this issue in Layout for a while, recently more often in SU. My solution is to click out of the window to desktop or other software (to reset the aforementioned control overlay apparently?), then snapping, tool switching, etc work when I click back into SU/LO again. A bit annoying, for sure, but it works and is quick.
Thanks for this-- that seems to work for me too. I had been completely closing SU and re-opening, but switching windows seems to be enough. Hopefully there will a fix released.
I’ve got an M1 Mac running the new graphics engine and haven’t suffered quite the same pain as you’ve got going on.
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It’s hard to tell the scale of what you’re working on in the video. Are these very small/closeup edits you’re making? If so that may be part of the issue.
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Another thing to look at: If you go into Window->Model Info->Units and turn off length snapping (which is on by default for all new files), does that help?
I’ve been having this exact same issue for a couple months now. Normally quitting the app works but that totally interrupts my workflow. Had the issue both with the new graphics switched on and off. It normally happens after I’ve been running the app for at least 10 minutes, and sometimes will go away if I switch tools or go grab a cup of tea and come back. The solution, clicking into another app and back, hasn’t always worked for me—and I also wouldn’t consider that a solution, as it’s clearly a bug that should be fixed.
M2 MacBook Air 16GB RAM, macOS14.4.1
Sketchup Version 24.0.554
I have noticed the same problem to a lesser degree. I’m on a newer, very fast, Windows 11 PC. There is a delay finding the snapping points, and a problem with Sketchup trying to snap to every point except the one you are hovering over.