Sketchup 7 Generate report and Help

dagfinnie

What is your OS version? I don't think the problem is necessarily about the language, as I have Finnish settings on in both my machines, but I am only getting the error on the one with an English basic OS.

Anssi

I use XP Professional. What do exactly happen when you click "Generate Report"? If I knew , I could investigate the problem. As it is now, it's like searching in the dark.

Anssi

When the Generate report function is selected, on the machine where it works, a dialog box opens. As in other Ruby applications, the dialog seems to be written as a HTML page, and for some reason it fails to load. Looking through the SU files in the Program files, I think I found it (reporter.html) in the Tools\DynamicComponents\HTML folder, and it was definitely there in both my machines.

What is your OS language? My situation is as follows:

Windows XP Home Finnish SP3 -> works
Windows XP Professional English SP3 -> error message instead of dialog box

Unfortunately the error does not display the URL it was trying to load the dialog from

Both have the Regional settings set to Finnish.

I tried looking at the firewall settings in the problem machine, but all the usual settings were enabled for SU.

Anssi

dagfinnie

I also found the file reporter.html in the Sketchup subdirectory. May be it's a problem with Win XP Professional. I have XP Prof. SP2.

Gaieus

I have Win XP Pro (Hungarian)at work and English at home. I have no problem with the html file popping up just fine however on either machines no matter what I change in the regional settings.

dagfinnie

I have tried different settings, moved files and allowed popups etc. It seems to make no difference. No luck getting the report. In my Imac it all works okay.
We have the same OS and it works for you. Maybe some local settings. Well, I will use my Mac for the report function until there is a solution. But I would be happy to know if anybody resolves the problem.
@gaieus said:

I have Win XP Pro (Hungarian)at work and English at home. I have no problem with the html file popping up just fine however on either machines no matter what I change in the regional settings.

thomthom

I also get a 404.

Vista Ultimate SP1, English, Norwegian locales.

Also seen this at work with XP Pro SP3, Norwegian, Norwegian locales

thomthom

This is a problem with SU and locales.

When I got to Regional and Language Options and set Current format to English (United States) the Generate Report function works.
But not when I have it set to Norwegian.

Jean Lemire

Hi folks.

I have the same problem on my work PC. The help loads OK but the generate report doesn't work.

I use IE 7 on a Windows XP-Pro machine. I tried changing my regional settings from French Canadian to English US with no success. Do I have to restart for the changes to take place ?

Just ideas.

thomthom

On my Vista machine I didn't have to restart. But maybe it's different between the two OS versions...

Can't exclude that there might be extra factors to this as well...

Jean Lemire

Hi folks.

On my iMac with French Canadian OS 10.4.11, I cannot access the help nor the Generate report function.

This is quite annoying since I am pushing SU 7 in the company where I work. My company is a member of a larger group that contains 43000 workers worldwide. To say that some quantities of SU licenses could be used in such a large corporation is a weak saying. I hope that Google solves that problem since it makes the software looks less than professionnal. Knowing the power of SU, I can bypass the questions of my coworkers by suggesting that they download the PDF manual but I would be speechless when some will ask me what is going on with the report generation.

Considering that I always get the French help when I choose the help from the English SU 6, is still quite anoying. I pointed that to Tracy at the Google Basecamp and she could not understand the problem.

Since many people in my Company are considering only high end softwares like AutoCAd and Catia, it is quite a challenge to promote SU.

Now, with glitches like that, it is quite difficult to position this software as a viable alternative to the big guns that we are using. You know me quite well now and you know that I am very fond of SU. However, I cannot push a software that present this kind of glitches and whose help center is a nigthmare to navigate.

I hope that some progress is made soon since I would not be happy to postpone the implementation of SU for too long in the company where I work. I will implement it but on a restricted users base and I an not too happy that I will have to tell them to live qith quirks and glitches.

Best regards.

dagfinnie

Hi Jean
I agree with you. This problem should be resolved asp. The problem seems to affect machines/OS set up with other languages than English and there seems to be even more to it. I have made the changes in regional and language settings. It seems to work for thomthom and others, but not for me. It could work for Vista and not for XP. It could work for XP SP3 and not for SP2. And it must be locally to SU7 since the program works(not works) differently from platform to platform.
It seems to be a programming issue and should therefore be dealt with/responded by the programming staff.

I hope there soon will be a response to this issue from the SU Developing Team. (And I am sure it will!)

snicolo

Hi All,
we are currently investigating this issue. Something useful to track the Generate report failure would be to know what url you are being directed to when you try to generate report and it fails.

Another thing to notice is that if you disconnect from the internet, the generate report functionality should work.

Working on it.
thanks for letting us know about it.
Simone.
(Google SketchUp team)

thomthom

I don't know how to get the URL of the page it tries to load.
When I get the 404 error, right click and choose properties the URL given is res://ieframe.dll/http_404_webOC.htm
which doesn't help much.

I just disconnected my internet connection and tried it. It did work. But I can't get any right click menu to get the properties of the page that loads.

Do you have any ideas of how we can debug the URL?

snicolo

Hey Thomas,
My only idea to get the URL from the Generate Report dialog was to right click and click on Properties.

Can you try the following:
open Internet Explorer and type in the following address:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/skpreport

This is the address we send the dialog to when your machine is online. When you open the page directly in IE it will complain about not knowing the skp protocol and then show some errors, but that is fine as long as the page looks like the Generate report dialog.

If that does not take you to a page similar to the generate report one, can you send me the address that it tried to send you too? and also what is displayed by right clicking on the window and selecting properties?

If that works fine, unfortunately we will need to investigate more.

Thanks a lot for your help.
Simone.

snicolo

Alright,
I finally was able to duplicate the issue.

There is a workaround, which is to open SU7 and click on "Get Models". The dialog that appears is going to have a language setting in the upper left corner. If you change that to English, it will set a cookie for the 3DWH and it will allow you to correctly access the Generate Report functionality when online.

I have filed a bug for it and we will address it hopefully very soon.

let me know if this works for you guys.

Another way to approach this would be to delete the cookies for IE on PC and Safari on Mac and then it should work, but I think the first workaround is preferable if you do not want to delete the cookies.

thanks and let me know if this worked for you guys.
Simone.

thomthom

Opening that URL in IE also gave an 404 with the Properties saying: res://ieframe.dll/http_404.htm#http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/skpreport

Using the Get Model workaround did work though. I had already the language set to English. But I set it to English (UK) then back to English and then the Generate report worked fine.

I'm curious though, why is the Generate Report using an online resource?

thomthom

By the way, you wouldn't know what gives an ActiveX error when trying to access Generate Report? (My computer at work suffers from this.) http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=15084

snicolo

The Generate Report is using an online resource because that would allow extensibility without having to create an installer. We can simply change the online version and add functionality without pushing an install to users. This is a forward looking design and I am not sure whether or not it will prove useful. But I think this was the reasoning behind it.

I am glad the workaround is effective, I am hoping that we will have a fix soon available.
thanks.
Simone.

snicolo

As far as the ActiveX error, I am not sure. I will ask around a little to see if there is a solution for that.
thanks.
Simone.

thomthom

@snicolo said:

The Generate Report is using an online resource because that would allow extensibility without having to create an installer. We can simply change the online version and add functionality without pushing an install to users. This is a forward looking design and I am not sure whether or not it will prove useful. But I think this was the reasoning behind it.

I am glad the workaround is effective, I am hoping that we will have a fix soon available.
thanks.
Simone.

I see. But what happens when a user often change between being connected and not connected to the internet? A laptop user that moves around often for instance. When you are connected you get one type of report which is different from when you're offline and there doesn't seem to be any indicator to why, leading to potential confusion.