[Plugin] !AdditionalPluginFolders - v5.4a - 27 Sep 20

Bob James

In order to use Dropbox as my plugins folder for all of my computers, I opened "Additonal Plugins Folder" and added a folder on Dropbox which is on local drive E:.

I then moved my plugins folder from

C:\Users\Bob\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp\SketchUp 2017\SketchUp\Plugins

to

E:\Dropbox\08 SketchUp\plugins

When I re-opened SU there were no plugins..

Should I have left the basic plugins (advancedcameratools, dynamiccomponent, etc) in their original location? Or is there something else I'm doing (or not doing) that's wrong?

fredo6

Bob,

AdditionalPluginFolders 'add' directory to the loading path. The original plugin directory is still part of the plugin path, so you can leave the SU plugins there if you wish (this is advised because in general, they are dependent on the Sketchup version).

I guess that if you have NO plugins loading may be because the directory path is not correct, or the drive is not accessible. In the Ruby console, try to type Dir["E:/Dropbox/08 SketchUp/plugins/*.*"] and see if you get the correct list of files and folders.

Fredo

Bob James

@fredo6 said:

AdditionalPluginFolders 'add' directory to the loading path. The original plugin directory is still part of the plugin path, so you can leave the SU plugins there if you wish (this is advised because in general, they are dependent on the Sketchup version)

I was hoping to have a single source of plugins for my networked desktop and laptop
Also, I thought you weren't supposed to have a plugin in two places (normal plus additional)

@fredo6 said:

I guess that if you have NO plugins loading may be because the directory path is not correct, or the drive is not accessible. In the Ruby console, try to type Dir["E:/Dropbox/08 SketchUp/plugins/*.*"] and see if you get the correct list of files and folders

I get the correct list of files and folders

Bob James

Something weird going on here. When I closed SU and opened it again, all of my toolbars were gone and SU was frozen and had to be closed with Task Manager!!

Bob James

Turns out that AdditionalPluginFolders must be installed in C:\Users\Bob\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp\SketchUp 2017\SketchUp\Plugins.

Once I did that almost all of my Dropbox plugins installed.
For one, Vertex tools did not.

fredo6

@bob james said:

Turns out that AdditionalPluginFolders must be installed in C:\Users\Bob\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp\SketchUp 2017\SketchUp\Plugins.

Indeed, otherwise Sketchup would not launch AdditionalPluginFolders.

It is true that the multi-directory capability for plugins should be a native functionality of Sketchup. After all these years where it was requested, it is still not there however!

Fredo

Bob James

@fredo6 said:

It is true that the multi-directory capability for plugins should be a native functionality of Sketchup. After all these years where it was requested, it is still not there however!Fredo

I'm not sure what this means. Should I put the plugins in both the normal and additional folders or just the additional folder?

Any thoughts about this?:
Something weird going on here. When I closed SU and opened it again, all of my toolbars were gone and SU was frozen and had to be closed with Task Manager!!

fredo6

@bob james said:

I'm not sure what this means. Should I put the plugins in both the normal and additional folders or just the additional folder?

NO. You put AdditionalPluginFolders only in the native Sketchup Plugin directory. This will allow AdditionalPluginFolders to be loaded by Sketchup, and then to load plugins from your Box directory, where you have your shared plugins.

@bob james said:

Any thoughts about this?:
Something weird going on here. When I closed SU and opened it again, all of my toolbars were gone and SU was frozen and had to be closed with Task Manager!!

Do you still have it?
Not easy to troubleshoot remotely, but if you did not put AdditionalPluginFolders in the native Sketchup Plugins directory, that was normal.

Fredo

Bob James

@fredo6 said:

NO. You put AdditionalPluginFolders plugin only in the native Sketchup Plugin directory. This will allow AdditionalPluginFolders to be loaded by Sketchup, and then to load plugins from your Box directory, where you have your shared plugins.

Apparently I was not clear in my question. My AdditionalPluginFolder plugin is only in the native folder as I mentioned earlier. I was asking about all the rest of the plugins. It was unclear which you were advocating: Other plugins just in the Dropbox folder or in both the Dropbox folder and the native folder.

@fredo6 said:

Do you still have it?

If by "it" you mean the folder setup putting most of my ~1GB of plugins in E:\Dropbox\plugins and identifying that path in AdditionalPluginFolders, then yes. These plugins are the plugins that were originally all in the native plugin folder.

Because of the strangeness of the "working and then not working" problem and the difficulty of troubleshooting it, I've decided to abandon trying to use AdditionalPluginFolders and go ahead and have each computer with its own native plugin folder and go back to trying to keep them both up to date (probably by synchronizing the folders after changes).

Thank you for taking the time to help.

fredo6

To summarize:

AdditionalPluginFolders --> SU native Sketchup plugin directory
plugins --> either in Box folder or in SU native Sketchup plugin directory but not both.

Note however that most plugins won't load twice, even if they are in the two directories.

Fredo

fredo6

NEW RELEASE 5.2a - 16 May 20

Update for OSX, including Catalina; plugins are loaded by alphabetic orders

See Plugin Page of AdditionalPluginsFolder for dowloading.

See first post of this thread for AdditionPluginFolders.

fredo6

NEW RELEASE 5.4a - 27 Sep 20

Fixed various issues

See Plugin Page of AdditionalPluginsFolder for downloading.

See first post of this thread for AdditionPluginFolders.

bsfranza

hi there

i have just installed two of tomtoms plugins over the sketchupdacion store in a additional plugin folder

the skethcup extension manager shows the plugins and wants to update them, but it gives this error message

also the plugins cant be uninstalled via the extensionmanager > it would be super if the two could be made compatible

greetings

fredo6

The native Sketchup Extension Manager forces all plugins to install in the standard Plugin directory. So, it won't try to find plugins anywhere else.

However, the Sketchucation ExtensionStore is capable to manage various plugin directories. I recommend you install it and manage your plugins with it.