Skechup and OS X Lion

[mopowers]

I spend most of the work week at a computer these days. I started out using Sketchup for my own jobs and occasional projects for other builders. It has snowballed into an almost full time business for me which is great news for my back and knees.

Recently i purchased my first Mac for the sole purpose of using Sketchup.  Come to find out OS X Lion is not supported by Sketchup. I am having an awful time with it, Sketchup constantly crashes. It really disrupts the work flow. Is anyone else out there using Sketchup with Lion? Are you experiencing any problems? I called Apple about stepping the OS back to Snow Leopard and apparently thats not even a possibility.

I had the misconception that an imac was going to be my knight in shining armor to save me from my previous snail speed windows machine. It looks like i might be going back.

 

[PeterK]

I have a couple Macs and while I don't have experience with SketchUp, My solution would be to use BootCamp that comes with the Mac and set up a dual boot with Windows7. I have done this with all my machines and it works great. You can use a program like Paralels (sp?) and run Windows stuff inside the Mac OS. Either way you will need a loadable copy of Windows.

 

[pdlandgang]

I had it on my MacBookPro when I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion and have had no problems.  Is there anything specific that you are doing the causes it to crash?  If so I can try duplicating the scenario and see if I hive the same problems.

 

[vidkid26]

Why is it that when one software application doesn't work or has problems, some people think that that its necessary to blame to computer and the operating system. If a certain type of sandpaper doesn't work with your ROS, do you take the sander back? If Apple had to make every piece of software work on there systems without any problems, we would all be using a hand held calculator and a two tin cans with a string . Contact the software manufacturer and see if an update is forthcoming. I really don't see the logic in paying lots of $$$$$ for using a free piece of software then cursing the computer.

 

[mopowers]

vidkid- The only person to blame is myself. I should of done more research before i purchased. I spent lots of $$$ on the software and twice as much on the computer. At this point i am cursing them both. For me the Mac was going to be a one trick pony- a sketchup machine. I have contacted both manufactures and compatibility is a known issue between the two. As of now there is no fix that i have found. There are ways to work around the issues but it seems counter productive to learn new ways to work around problems to keep it from crashing.  Since i do not personally know anyone else using a Mac or Sketchup i thought i would ask here to get a feel for other peoples experiences. I was in no way dissing your precious mac, on the contrary i think the build quality of all the components are well beyond any pc i have seen. I have always used Thinkpads and thought them to be tops, at this point i will be disappointed if i need to go back. Thanks for your helpful insight.

pdlandgang - One action that shuts me down every time is trying to group components or groups within the outliner. I also run into problems sending a file to layout or to a rendering software, it sometimes takes several tries. Working with photo match works ok but has lots of glitches. It would be good to know if you have problems within the outliner, it could be a good indication if i have something else interfering. I am running sketchup pro, not sure if there would be a difference.

PeterK- Thanks for the tip. That is an option i have considered. The sketchup licensing is different for the pc and mac so i will have figure out how that would work out.

 

[pugilato]

I run Sketchup on my Mac with Snow Leopard and it works as well as ever... Sketchup is not fully vetted by Apple, and I did have problems in the past with the application crashing and that accursed spinning beach ball.  I have been wanting to get Lion, but I did read somewhere that Sketchup does not play nice with it, so I have held off.  I dont think you will get any sympathy from Apple, so the only thing you can do is pray that Google will make it Lion compatible.

 

[pugilato]

From the Sketchup web page... known issues with Lion (and some workarounds):
On behalf of the SketchUp team, I want to give everybody a heads-up that we've encountered a few issues using SketchUp on the new Mac Lion OS. You can check them out below (along with suggested workarounds); we are working on improving/fixing these -- thanks in advance for replying here with any other issues you find using SketchUp on the new Mac OS!

Issue: SU freezes when generating scene thumbnails for models with background images (ie, those with Match Photo scenes).
Workaround: Keep the Scenes dialog box closed when working with models with background images.

Issue: In a model with 1 match photo scene, the camera is no longer synced back to the scene when clicking on the scene.
Workaround:  Add a second scene via some method other than using the Scenes dialog - e.g. right click on the Scene tab and select “Add”.  Adding a scene via the Scenes dialog is not possible given the first issue.

Issue: When trying to login to the 3D Warehouse from within SketchUp, you see the message “Service not available.  Try again later”.
Workaround:  You can still login to the 3D Warehouse outside of SketchUp by going directly to the site:  http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/  From there, it is possible to then upload KMZ files which means you need to export your SketchUp model to the KMZ format before uploading.

Issue: When selecting a region using the “Photo Textures”  dialog,  only one pin is visible which makes it hard to accurately grab a photo texture.  You can still grab photo textures - it is just that grabbing the exact region you want is now more difficult as you can’t see all the pins.
Workaround:  By left clicking on the photo region and moving the mouse, you can somewhat manipulate the region you want to capture.

Issue: With the new Lion OSX, there is a new Mouse option (“Move content in the direction of finger movement when scrolling or navigating”) which is checked by default.  When this option is checked, scrolling forward with the mouse wheel causes the SU model to zoom out and scrolling backwards causes the model to zoom in.
Workaround:  In Lion, go to System Preferences > Mouse and uncheck “Move content in the direction of finger movement when scrolling or navigating”.  Note: in a future release, unchecking this option should no longer be necessary.

Issue: Stacked Snappy dialogs can now break apart after resizing one of the dialogs in the stack.
Workaround:  Re-snap the dialogs together if they break apart after a resize.

Issue: With Lion, SketchUp now remembers whatever models you had open in a previous SketchUp session and, on re-launch, opens those same models.  This means that models can now show up behind the Welcome dialog,  which is a change of behavior.  It may also mean that SketchUp can take longer to launch and may potentially re-open a problem model from a previous session.
Workaround:  Close your models prior to exiting SketchUp if you do not like this behavior.
Updates:
More detail on the workarounds for the issue with syncing to a current scene:
1. Click on a different scene tab and click back on your current scene tab to re-sync the scene  or  2. Open the Scenes dialog and double click on the current Scene thumbnail to re-sync the scene  (warning: due to issue #1, avoid this workaround if you have a model with a Match Photo scene).

 

[pdlandgang]

dgpowers,

I did mess around tonight some more and could not get anything to break.  I am just using the free version, so some of the advance features might not be around to create the problem.  Sorry I cannot be of any more help.

 

[GhostFist]

[bite tongue]