[jasonwd]

I have had this issue for pretty much the last year, and it only really affects me on a tight deadline when I need to be, for instance, post processing the render whilst another is being rendered.

I have a feeling this is a Mavricks issue.

When Fire is rendering a scene, the Mac Activity Monitor reports that the CPUs are pinned at 100%... I go off and make a cup of tea, or switch to Pixelmator and manically start scribbling.. the CPU stays at 100% and after a while the fans spool down and the SL doesn't increase, until I move window focus back to SketchUp.

Any ideas; or is this craziness supposed to happen?

[JDHill]

It seems a likely possibility, though I haven't previously heard report of it. Searching, I do find reference to others having similar issues, ostensibly mavericks-specific, and at least one tool that might be able to help mitigate it (apparently it is a frontend for the unix renice utility).

The problem would be that while it may be possible for Maxwell developers (I don't really know, I don't handle this part) to request an opt-out from aggressive management for Maxwell Render, the plugin is running in SketchUp. I'll notify our main OSX developer of this thread in case he might have some ideas.

[nachob]

Hi Jason,
thats the standard way mavericks treats applications when they have no visible windows or parts of window, just put them to rest (except if the applications decide to opt out this behaviour, as we do in Maxwell but not in the plugins because they are running inside other application with their own policies). If you leave a window shown (even a corner) it shouldnt pause the process.

We are going to investigate if we can avoid that from the plugin side, but I cannot promise anyhing.

nachob

[jasonwd]

Thanks guys keep me posted...

...it does seem to happen whilst the window is showing. My setup is a Retina MBP connected to a pair of Thunderbolt Monitors so the render normally stays on top of the SU window on one monitor so I can keep an eye on it.