[dvsone1440]

I often have trouble exporting my sketchup model to MXS. It will go through writing the textures... parsing... writing groups... and then it gets to components and invariably will just stop. Leaving me with no MXS. I can sometimes literally just try again and it will work. Other times it doesn't and I have to start deleting components until It will export again. Or it bug splats. I only seem to have this trouble with a model once it starts to get larger.

[JDHill]

That description is indicative of an out-of-memory scenario. You can reduce the likelihood of this by purging unused definitions and materials from the model, avoiding the use of Maxwell Fire in the session (especially in the case that you have large HDRIs, or are using grass), and making use of MXS References, rather than including overly-detailed geometry directly in the SKP.

[dvsone1440]

I have switched over to using MXS for all the larger geometry elements and that is working great. Would the "fire" part of your comment explain why I often can reboot and then it works? Does it create a temp file that gets refreshed after rebooting or something? I am using a large HDRI, and a little grass.

The model I am working on now did export once I rebooted.

[JDHill]

No, but if you are on the edge of exportability, avoiding the use of Fire will leave more memory untouched, and therefore less fragmented. By restarting SketchUp, you are starting over with a totally clean slate -- it should not be necessary to reboot.

[dvsone1440]

Great thanks.. .it seems I am often on the edge of export-ability. But I tested it a couple times and restarting sketch-up seems to be helping.
When you say out of memory.. is that something the page file size could help in windows? Intel R Core TM i7-3770K CPU 3.50GHz 16 GB 2.7.20.0 Win64
Thanks again for all your help.
Derek

[JDHill]

No, there's really no help for it -- SketchUp being a 32 bit application, a single instance is only capable of using an absolute maximum of 4GB of your 16. Due to fragmentation, the real usable maximum is generally more on the order of 3GB.

[dvsone1440]

So in cases where I had a large model would it help if I made the entire site say.. or something like that, a separate mxs that was imported? Divide and conquer so to speak?

[JDHill]

If that's really necessary, yes. But I would use (64-bit) Studio for assembly and rendering. The thing to understand about using MXS References in the plugin is that though they are extremely helpful, they aren't magic -- if you render the model in Fire, the referenced MXS, and any resource it uses, must indeed be loaded into memory for rendering. With Fire out of the picture though, I really cannot picture someone working with a SketchUp file so large that it could not be exported to MXS. It would just be too painful to work with such a model. But with the use of Fire, and especially with the use of MXS References, the necessary amount of memory can easily be several times that required for SketchUp and MXS export alone.

[numerobis]

Are you using sketchup materials with internal textures or referenced MXMs?
I normally use a lowres texture for the sketchup material and the highres version in a referenced MXM. This can help to reduce your file size.

[dvsone1440]

They (MXS) do seem to be making a huge difference... and now that I know not to use fire in the case of this model... It seems to be consistently exporting.