I decided to do the upgrade of my Sketchup Pro 2023 up to Sketchup Pro 2024.
I decided to do the upgrade of my Sketchup Pro 2023 up to Sketchup Pro 2024.
I do not approach upgrading in a big hurry, particularly if my program is working ok, because for me and the work I do, it is rare that I can upgrade and not have to spend (sometimes a lot) of time getting the upgrade to work properly.
I finally did get around to upgrading to Sketchup Pro 2024 and I am pleasantly surprised at how much better it is. They have worked on the graphics engine and now it displays very complex Sketchup Drawing Files with no problems that I have seen. It even allows one to choose to use their computer’s graphic card instead of the “default” Sketchup graphics engine. I was able to choose my Nividia RTX Quatro Pro 4000.
I make my Sketchup Pro drawings using what I see as the design concepts of human anatomy and biology. I start with small but properly functioning subunits. I duplicate these subunits and create a small collection of them to give me a capability. I then duplicate these small collections and combine them to create groups that give the design more capability. I then combine sets of duplicates of these groups to give the final design. This allows final results that have the capabilities that I want, but this method also creates very complex 3D structures. I also frequently will duplicate these structures in the drawings so I can show various different configurations/abilities of these structures.
Some of these “collections of structures” final drawing files are so complex that while I understood what was going on and I wanted the file to exist as it was to show what I was talking about, unfortunately the file was so big and complex that Sketchup Pro could not properly display it. Thus I chose not to show it or discuss it in my YouTube videos.
But now with the new version of Sketchup Pro 2024 and its much improved graphics and display abilities, I can open these drawings that used to be essentially unavailable for me to discuss and now I can show them and move around in them with ease. I am impressed!
I decided to collect 5 of these complex files and create a YouTube video showing how the new Sketchup Pro 2024 handles showing and moving around inside these drawing files with no real problems. I have set here on this page free downloads of these Sketchup Pro files, so, if you have Sketchup Pro, you can download them and open them in your own computer.
Sketchup Pro 2024 also has an FBX export function that I used on these 5 Sketchup files to create FBX exports of them. I also placed on this page free downloads of these FBX files. Of note, my download program only allows download of one file at a time. Thus these FBX exports which are an FBX file plus a folder of textures, the FBX export needs to be combined into a single zip file. Thus you will need to do the download of the zip and then on your computer you need to extract the zip to get a proper FBX export that can be loaded into a 3D drawing program. This allows folks with reasonably high quality 3D drawing programs to download these FBX files and open them on their own computer in their own 3D drawing programs. I tested these FBX exports with my copy of normal Autodesk Maya 2024, and it opened them with no problems. I think this means any of the suite of Autodesk 3D programs would open these FBX files, including the 3D printing programs. So folks can make 3D printed models of these drawings if they want. I will mention, in my Maya, these files have 4000-16000 meshes, and 4000-16000 groups. I think you will need your computer to have a fast, good CPU, a fast, good SSD drive as your C drive, probably an SSD of at least 1 terabyte (to load and manage the temp files in Maya), you will need a good graphics card, you need in Maya to set under shading (even for the visiport) for hardware texturing. Otherwise these 3D drawing files make (at least in my Maya) a Maya drawing that is so complex that Maya will bog down and fail trying to do the FBX import.
I will set below an image from the Sketchup Pro drawing, and under the image I will place for the topic related to this image a link for downloading the Sketchup Pro skp file and the Sketchup FBX export for this topic shown by the image.
Enjoy! Dr. Gray
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