Display problem in Sketchup

Sketchup 6, 7 and 8 suffers from a small bug in the display of 3D in camera/parallel projection mode (when parallel lines are represented as parallel and not as leaks)

The display with a section

Sometimes your Sketchup models get cut by an imaginary cutting plane that moves when you orbit your model like the example below:

The solutions

  • First of all, it should be noted that Sketchup does not handle the “camera/parallel projection” display mode very well, so you should switch to “camera/perceptive” mode. Indeed, the parallel mode must be used for top or front views in order to simulate a 2D mode.
  • If this is not appropriate, you should then disable the graphics card parameters: “window/preference/open GL” (on PC): uncheck the 3 crosses. These improve the dynamic display or the quality of the textures but are detrimental to the performance.
  • The bug appears when the graphics card has to handle a volume that is too large compared to the zoom. Check that there is no object (line, face, point, component) far from your model (for example with an extended zoom).
  • As a last solution, the problem also appears when you put an object very far from the origin. Display all the hidden elements, display all the layers, zoom in, if the model is very far away, it means that an entity is floating very far away from the model. It is therefore necessary to clean it up.

The bug is known at Google and is being addressed.