[quote=“http://help.sketchup.com/en/article/36208”, full:true]Recommended Hardware
3D class Video Card with 1 GB of memory or higher. Please ensure that the video card driver supports OpenGL version 2.0 or higher and up to date.
SketchUp’s performance relies heavily the graphics card driver and it’s ability to support OpenGL 2.0 or higher. Historically, people have seen problems with Intel-based cards with SketchUp. We don’t recommend using these graphics cards with SketchUp at this time.[/quote]
multi-/hyper-threading is difficult to realize with serialized modeling operations of vector-based geometry and therefore not supported… as with more or less all 3D modeling applications availble for the modeling tasks, rendering of raster data or file operations are another thing.
where is this claimed (URL)?
SU can use the amount of memory the operting system provides to applications, e.g. with Win 7 x32 roughly 2.5 GB if an application as SU is large address aware (otherwise 2.0 GB). More info on the memory limitations of the different Windows versions at this MSDN article.
I work as a graphic designer for a telecommunication company (brochures, posters ext) and recently started to use SketchUp for making videos for this company using large scale cities with textures and shadows. This files often exceed 200 Mb. My big problem is when moving from scene to scene to check the normal flow of the video, If shadows are on, I have to wait maybe more than 10 sec for the transition from scene to scene. If also consider the possibility to use later a rendering program (for the videos) what do you suggest that I should I change (add) to my existing PC?
I use SketchUp 2015 Pro and Win7 Pro 64-Bit
PC Characteristics:
Dell Optiplex 7020
Intel(R) Core™ i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60GHz (8 CPUs)
8192 RAM
DirectX 11
[quote=“asit, post:22, topic:1402”]
what do you suggest that I should I change (add) to my existing PC?
[/quote]You don’t mention your graphics card model and manufacturer. As to CPU, I would guess that changing that to anything “more powerful” will not make a noticeable difference, as you already have a 3+GHz machine. SketchUp is single threaded, so your 8 cores are not of much help, except what TurboBoost gives. So, if your graphics card is very poor (or if you don’t have any but rely on an Intel boilt-in chip) putting in a decent Nvidia-based card would help somewhat.
You should pay attention to your modelling technique, and especially to what happens to your polygon count if you use imported 3D entourage elements like trees, cars and people from the 3D Warehouse. http://help.sketchup.com/en/article/36235
Thank you Anssi for your reply!
Indeed I don’ t have a graphics card. Do you think an nvidia 1GB RAM DDR3 (supports GL 3.1) would give a boost to performance? We have one spare.
I will read the link you gave me (looks very informing)
IMO any Nvidia-based card will boost performance compared to an Intel chip, so if your old one fits into a slot in your computer, you should give it a try. The computer I am writing this with has an old Nvidia Quadro card with 768 MB of memory, and it runs my models quite well. They are small, though.
The computer was bought with the thought that we met the requirements to run Sketchup. It’s brand new and there are no other programs except MS Office and Sketcup. I’ve done all the windows updates as well us updated NVIDIA graphic drivers.
Our computer is just using Sketchup Viewer to navigate around sketchup files sent to us by our clients. We are a homebuilding company so most of our files are huge with a lot of layers. Files range from 100 MB - 400 MB. When I open a sketchup file, it will load properly but then it will freeze on me.
Is there something that I need to do to fix this or is my system not sufficient enough to handle this big file?
In practice the graphics card doesn’t make a big difference in the user experience, but the difference between having and not having one is huge. I can orbit my small models quite happily with all the computers I use (graphics cards GeForce 620M, Quadro FX 1800, Quadro K4000). SketchUp zooming and orbiting taxes heavily the one CPU thread it uses because the division of labour uses the CPU to process your model geometry while the GPU takes care of textures and shadows, roughly.
In the current case I would say that investing to new hardware won’t make a difference - what is needed is time invested in optimizing the models involved. 100…400 MB for a SketchUp home design is enormous. Revit or Archicad make huge files, too, but the BIM models we create of our largish public projects tend to be smaller than that, and if I convert one to SketchUp it would be even smaller.
Thank you for you response. It is a whole community not just a single home that is why the file is so big. The file is actually 600 plus MB. Our clients are the one creating this for us, we just view it.
One user suggested it might be a Sketchup Viewer issue and I should use the Sketchup Pro. I’ll try the trial version and see if this will work.
Even with an entire community being depicted, there are probably several methods available to significantly reduce file size. It is likely that a number of the buildings and other features are repeated and these are prime candidates to be saved as components. Specific segments of the overall layout could be cut (or copied} /pasted in place and then saved as individual models and reassembled later into a single larger model at final compilation. Also, making frequent use of thr Purge Unused command is an obvious approach.
I know but for getting the maximum performance with high polycount models a well balanced system (CPU/GPU on par) is always desirable… especially if the last bit of performance gain is avail for approx. U$ 180.- (besides selling the Quadro).
Pays for itself in a short time at least for commercial users * imho *
Yes, but using components only reduces file size, unfortunately with no improvement in file performance when open. Clalisan’s statistics show that the file already has a lot of components. What slows it down is the enormous amount of edges and faces. Usual culprits are entourage elements like 3D trees, plants, cars and people. Houses tend to be much simpler. The component count as compared to face count makes me guess the presence of 3D trees with a nested component structure (leaves inside boughs inside larger branches etc) that truly reduce file size but slow the model down even more because of their complex structure.
I don’t understand what you tell us about your hardware specs. Your Dell link points to a laptop with only integrated graphics, no possibility to add a graphics card. Which of the processor options do you have? Are you still using Windows 7 (risky)? What size models are you trying to view?