SketchUp is driving me nuts - need help

[jteneyck]

A few weeks ago SketchUp (Makes 2017 latest version) appeared to just lockup in mid operation.  Then I realized it wasn't locking up, it was just taking many seconds to complete whatever I was asking it to do, like it would take what seemed like 10 seconds to highlight an object I clicked on or to go into edit mode.  I made due w/o SketchUp but now need to do some drawing and need it again.  I uninstalled and reinstalled it; same thing. 

Anyone have any ideas what's going on?  Otherwise, my PC appears to be running normally, and I have found nothing doing checks for malware, etc.  Trimble's website offered no obvious help when I looked. 

Thanks,

John

[badwhiskey]

My guess would be with insufficient RAM or your video card is not up to the task.

[jteneyck]

CheckUp says everything is good.  I was using it for months w/o problems.  I wonder if the problem started when Windows 10 did a huge, hours long update/reinstall?  Not sure but I think it started around the same time.

John

[daddo]

Windows 10- there's your problem.

Go to "task manager" and see what program is eating your memory while sketch is running.

Try dropping the toolbars and use shortcut keys.

Try disabling all but the Default plug-ins.

[jteneyck]

About 40% of my 8 GB of memory is being used, Firefox using the most at around 400 MB.  You need 2 GB to run SketchUp.  I've got 8 and the Task Mgr. shows 60% is still available with SketchUp running. 

John

[jteneyck]

Thanks to Dave Richards and a guy on SMC I'm back up and running - using Make2016.  With that platform, and prior ones, you can turn off "Use Hardware Acceleration", and that solved the problem.  So the root of the problem is Win10.  If you're having problems with Make2017 that might be the source of your problems, too.  

John

[badwhiskey]

Thanks for reporting the solution!

[Guest]

As I told John in our e-mail conversation, the problem could be due to Windows 10. Microsoft has pushed some updates that caused problems for a number of software applications including SketchUp.

It could also be due to less than adequate graphics card drivers. This has been an especially wide spread problem for computers with Intel HD 4000 series cards as well as some Radeon GPUs. Updating graphics drivers might help. If you are experiencing slow downs, make sure graphics drivers are up to date. For SU2017, your graphics card needs to support OpenGL 3.0 or higher so if you have an older machine, check with the maker of the GPU .

Turning off Hardware Acceleration in Preferences>OpenGL offloads rendering duties from the GPU to the CPU. Due to the new graphics pipeline, SketchUp 2017 doesn't do CPU rendering like older versions. This means your GPU needs to be capable of handling it. That doesn't mean you need an expensive, top of the line GPU though.

[pawolf]

John,
I had a similar-sounding issue runnigg SketchUp on my Lenovo notebook computer.  It has an NVIDIA graphics 'card', as well as graphics support integrated on the motherboard.  When I opened the NVIDIA control panel, the preferred graphics processor setting was to use the integrated graphics processor rather than the NVIDIA graphics processor.  I'm guessing some update of some sort changed that setting.  I changed the settign to use the NVIDIA graphics processor, and SketchUp was back running fine again.

[Guest]

@pawolf, Windows seems to do things like that during automatic updates. I've heard of other users having that experience. It's kind of annoying when the updates change settings from what you want. Glad you got it sorted out, though.