Upgrading from V-8 to V-15 (Make)
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One of the most important rules is to find and install up-to-date versions of all plugins; do not copy them from v8 to 2015. There have been major changes between those versions, causing a very real risk that copying will produce an unstable system that crashes a lot!
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I know that what I'm about to say has nothing to do with the question you pose but... I guess you know that V8's free version can be used commercially while 2015 (Make) is only for hobbyists?
I'm sorry but it felt an important note...
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Thank you all. That helped.
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I'm going to sound like a newbie, but....
I've d/l'd Sketchucation.
How do I install it?
Haven't done something like this in years.....
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@jgb said:
...I've d/l'd Sketchucation.
How do I install it?...It's a standard .rbz plugin file so in SU >> Preferences >> Extensions >> Add Extension >> select the .rbz and click yes to Trust...
The from the 'Extensions' menu you can get other plugins from the Plugin Store...
john
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Thanks, that worked.
What threw me initially was the change in the name of the SU plugin dir.
(Why Why Why would they do that???)
I put the .rbz into that and it worked as you said. -
It shouldn't matter what the folder is called because you don't need to access it directly.
Don't put .rbz files in the Extensions folder. Let Install Extension, the SCF Plugin Store and Extension Warehouse install files to that folder automatically.
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Me again.
So I installed a few plugins using SketchUcation with no apparent problems.
It reported they were installed in the C:/Users/jgb/appdata/roaming/sketchup/sketchup 2015/sketchup/plugins dir.
Why there and NOT in my main SU15 directory???
Why bury it so deep???
And where do I put normal .rb plugins?
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The reason for the location of the Extensions folder is because Microsoft and Apple both restricted access to the directories where programs got installed. Surely you remember going through the whole thing of changing permissions for the Plugins folder with SU8. I'm sure you had to do that.
It only takes a few moments of looking at some of the very long plugin threads to see how many users had difficulty installing plugins because they had to be taught how to change those permissions.
With the current location of the Extensions folder, that problem of changing permissions is past. And for the most part, you have no need to access the extensions folder directly because there are three ways to installed plugins automatically.
As for the .rb files, put them in that Extensions folder. Or, put the file into a ZIP file, change the extension from .zip to .rbz and install it with Preferences>Extensions>Install Extension.
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I never had a permissions problem installing SU8. I am the admin for my PC.
Thanks for the tip on placing .rb files. I would never have figured that out.
If that is the case, what is the 2015 "ifcplugin" folder used for?And, why does SU not give the ability to import old version settings and plugins when updating SU?
Do we have to go through the hours of manually resetting everything every time,; toolbars, plugins, preferences, file locations, materials, etc??
2 days and I am not yet setup as I am used to with SU-8. -
What OS were you using with SU8? The permissions thing started with Vista and continues going forward. It has nothing to do with you being the administrator and it doesn't come into play with installing the program.It's only an issue once the program folders are created and you want to add things to them. Microsoft and Apple did that to protect program file folders from getting bad stuff installed either unwittingly by users who don't know enough about the workings of their computers or by malicious actions.
The IFCPlugins folder has to do with the IFC classification system. Leave it alone. Do not add anything to any of the folders in the Program File SketchUp directories.
The reason you can't just copy your plugins over from V8 is because several versions ago, there was a switch from the unsupported Ruby 1.8 to the current Ruby 2.0. This change required that the code for many plugins be updated.
There was a change with SU2013 in the way toolbars are managed which prevents them from becoming scrambled. It also allows you to create custom toolbars for the native tools so you can get rid of tools you never use.
You can open your old template in SU2015 and then immediately save it as a template so that part is easily covered. You could also export your keyboard shortcuts from SU8 and load them into SU2015 although any that point to plugins in the Plugins menu will need to get updated.
It's probably a good idea to spend some time thinking about the plugins you install and skip those you never use.
It shouldn't take you two days to make the switch.
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Dave
I really appreciate the time you are taking to help me on this.I am using Win 7 Home Premium. I do not recall having any issue installing SU-8 when I had my XP HD crash, then upgraded my
drive to an SSD and loaded Win 7. I reinstalled everything on it from scratch, using my old recovered HD as only a data repository. For SU-8 after a reinstall on the SSD, I mainly just copied the contents of directories to get back up. I know I cannot do this with SU-15. Well, my fav template got copied over no problem. 
I do remember still having a bitch of a time configuring my SU-8 to what I was used too.
There really should be a tool to automate upgrade conversions, especially if SU is now on an annual update path. I have never encountered an app that needed this much work to effect an upgrade, or even a reinstall.Anyway, this time, in anticipation, I wrote down on paper every aspect of SU-8, file locations, toolbars, preferences, etc. Some were screen shots, others were printouts, ie: shortcuts. I exxed off the rarely used and never used plugins, but still had a lot of needs and used often plugins to load. I am about 1/2 way there.
It wasn't 2 full days, but to date about 10+ hours and counting trying to get SU-15 to feel like my old SU-8. There are plugins that have changed names, there are plugins and tools that I always thought were native SU, there are plugin names that bear no resemblance to the menus and tools they provide, there are RBZ plugins in Sketchucation, and more not in the store that I need or use often. And to top it all off there are new native tools that used to be plugins, and all of the tool icons look different, as well as menu location changes. Plus there are toolbars I had in SU-8 I cannot find in SU-13; perhaps they are a custom TB. Confusing for my 70 year old head.
I'll admit I am not one to play with SU and understand its inner workings...
To me SU is a tool to draw stuff, and even then I use maybe 50% of its capabilities.
Yet on average, I spend about 6 to 10 hours a day in SU. It is hands down my most used app on my PC. But most of the configuration setup on SU-8 was done years ago in SU-3, 5 and 7 so a lot of stuff I have forgotten how to do. Hence my opening line in this thread.Right now, I have pretty well loaded the store of what I need and use into the extensions library. Two of them I just loaded, Pipe along path and CofG were the first I tested. I drew a wavy line and PaP'd it. Noted extra parameters to explore later, but that went well.
Then I tried CoG and SU-15 froze.
I had to crash it. No bugsplat.Then I came here.
Next thing is to tryout all the extensions, then search for the list of RB's I need and install them.
TTFN
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As I said, it isn't the installation of SketchUp that required the permissions change. At some point under Win7 you had to change the permissions for the Plugins folder to be able to install files to it. That wasn't the case on XP, though.
It shouldn't take so long to get SU2015 set up the way you want it. it isn't meant to be difficult. It should actually be easier. It would probably go faster, though, if you keep up with the version updates. Maybe I should start offering a SketchUp setup service. I could do it with remote access.
SketchUp can pick up shortcuts automatically although I haven't tried that with such a big version jump.
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