When you're busy and working to meet deadlines, you need SketchUp to be fast.
This article will explore a few things to check if you're experiencing performance issues in SketchUp
Check you meet requirements
To run SketchUp properly, you will need a supported operating system as well as capable hardware. You can find the requirements your machine must meet here:
Update drivers
A variety of issues can arise if your graphics card drivers are not up to date. You will need to check with your card vendor (e.g. Nvidia / AMD) to find the latest drivers for your specific card. As a majority of users tend to have Nvidia cards, you can search for the latest Nvidia drivers here:
Disable Plugins
Sometimes, issues are caused by third party plugins. If you're experiencing issues, it is always a good idea to disable all of your extensions and see if the problem goes away. If the issue is not present when plugins are disabled, it's safe to assume at least one of them is the cause. Try turning them back on one by one to locate which one causes the problem.
Other computer processes (resource manager / activity monitor)
You can open the Resource Manager in Windows, or the Activity Monitor on a Mac to observe the load your machine is under. If your processor is nearing 100% load, or your RAM is at capacity, it might be time for an upgrade to your hardware to handle your models. You can also see the other applications that are running on your computer. Sometimes, processes running in the background, such as an antivirus scan, can cause your entire computer to slow down. If another program is using a high percentage of resources, try closing it and see if SketchUp improves.
Outliner tool
SketchUp features a powerful tool called Outliner which allows you to view a model's groups, components and section planes as a hierarchical tree. While usually not an issue, this tool can sometimes cause a performance drop with larger models. If you're experiencing lag with a larger model, try disabling outliner to see if the situation improves. You can do this by going to Window > Outliner.
If you've tried what we've suggested here but haven't seen any improvement, you can
open a support ticket where we are happy to assist you further and also check
SketchUp community for other peoples issues, fixes and support.
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