@unknownuser said:

AndrewS uses macs and he was posting here on the forums earlier today... a PM to him may help?

I also wrote the Mac installer, so I have a little insight there, but perhaps not quite enough to be useful. (See below)

@peter_pan said:

(I uninstalled by deleting app.support, preferences and program files). The same happens with a clean install of Sketchup 7.1 (free version). Could there be any hidden settings files that I might not know about? Is there a complete list of files related to SketchUp somewhere which I can check?

Before Snow Leopard, there were "receipts" that also needed to be removed. (Anything beginning with Google_SU7_ in the "/Library/Receipts" directory). By deleting SketchUp's receipts, you remove all prior knowledge of SketchUp from the Installer application, thereby ensuring it does a complete job of reinstallation when you run it again. Unfortunately, this mechanism was changed in Snow Leopard and receipts aren't used anymore. I read an article a couple of months ago indicating that there's now an installer database that has to be queried and cleared instead, but unfortunately, I've been so busy with other things that I have not had the opportunity to investigate the specific procedure myself. My guess is that you may need to clear the Google SketchUp package entries from the installer database when working with 10.6+.

@unknownuser said:

check this link (click the mac osx option)..
http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=36209
those are all the files that you might want to trash prior to reinstalling sketchup.

The receipt removal is not listed there. I will talk to our tech support about updating the article to reflect the receipts for 10.5 and older, and also with the Snow Leopard instructions once I determine exactly what they are. However, the article does a great job of pointing out everything ELSE you need to do to uninstall SketchUp from your Mac.

If I think of anything that will help, I'll be sure to let you know. Please keep us posted as to your progress.

@tomot said:

Would it not be simpler to create a patch.exe for D/L, to fix these bugs: Instead everyone is downloading and installing yet another copy of GoogleSketchUpProWEN.exe

I recognize that it may seem inconvenient to have to download such big files every time we make an update, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not too frequent. Creating patches is actually an extraordinary amount of work in comparison to using our existing (automated) process for creating full product installers. I've seen an awful lot of complaints around the forums in general from folks who seem to think we have a team of thousands working on SketchUp and wanting to know why we haven't fixed every pet peeve bug. The truth is, we're a pretty small team and every minute we spend fixing problem "A" is a minute lost to problem "B". I think the amount of work it will take to create reliable patch files and the tech support effort it would require to make sure everyone installs and manages them in the proper sequence and manner would easily dwarf any benefit that such a scheme would provide.

You can also thank the good folks at Apple for never creating a fundamentally solid install/uninstall technology, which also contributes greatly to the problem on Mac. While we use a good MSI technology on Windows that makes managing installation a much easier affair, it still would be quite a bit of work to make such customizations. I'll also point out that if you were to perform a binary diff on all of the files in each release, you would find that the overwhelming majority of files were all changed, which is a byproduct of our product architecture. Fixing the underlying architecture to actually make patch distribution an efficient endeavor would be an enormous job which would go 100% unnoticed, unfortunately.

@unknownuser said:

It would also make more sense to rename each new GoogleSketchUpProWEN.exe by including the revision number in the title ie. GoogleSketchUpProWEN.v7.1.4871.exe It would make it easier to distinguish the latest from all the other turkeys?

We keep the filename the same for a few very good reasons. 1) We don't have to change all of our back-end code for serving files from the online store, etc. 2) It ensures that when people post links here on the forums, they continue to be up-to-date at all points in the future, which is an entirely worry-free endeavor.

When I post SketchUp for download, I actually do provide it under a specific link including the version number, in addition to the generic one, but it's not something that is well publicized.
For instance, http://dl.google.com/sketchup/gsu7/PW-2-1-6087-EN.exe

I think you have to admit though that it's a lot easier to just go into SketchUp and use the "check for update" mechanism to find out if a new version is available, instead of having to remember and mess with version numbers.

@unknownuser said:

happy gobble gobble!

And the same to you and yours!

Cheers!

@tfdesign said:

I'm curious to know what you other Mac Leopard users think of the latest SU build.

I use Leopard still and I have found build 5803 to be more stable than 4870.

@unknownuser said:

I've had to go back to v7.1.4870 because I was getting slower performance.

Did this remedy the performance issue? There's only one reason I can think of why performance may have been compromised with the upgrade, but it wouldn't have gone away with the downgrade.

@unknownuser said:

I even had a crash- the first one in fact, and oddly enough, no crash log screen popped up either.

That's not too weird. As hard as we try, we can't always capture the crash with our reporting software; neither can the Apple crash reporter.

@unknownuser said:

Updating to Snow Leopard this evening, after I've backed up my hard drive.

I can't imagine any reason that this would solve your problem aside from the fact that if you do a clean install, the settings/configuration across your entire machine and in SketchUp will be replaced with defaults, possibly correcting any damage that was caused by misconfiguration. That's a good enough reason to try a clean install, I suppose! I don't know whether it will make a difference if you just do an upgrade installation of Snow Leopard, however.

Let us know how it goes.

@asbrand said:

I am attempting to install the new "free" version of Google Sketchup on a PC (running XP Pro) and am having a bit of difficulty.

I do not want to install it to the drive. I always install programs on a different drive, and leave the just for Windows.

However, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make this thing give me the option of where to install.

asbrand,

I just tested this out and it works exactly as expected when installing anew.

The only thing I can figure is that you must already have SketchUp installed on your system. If that is the case, the installer performs an upgrade installation, which does not allow you to modify the destination. This makes sense when you consider how you may have plugins or other pieces of software installed which depend on the installed location of SketchUp, so it can't be changed on upgrade.

The only way to fix this is to uninstall Google SketchUp 7 first, from the Add/Remove Programs part of the Control Panel and then download and install it again. When you do that, the installation sequence will be as follows:

1. Welcome
2. EULA
3. Destination folder
4. Ready to install

Don't believe me? Check the attached screen capture.

Let us know how it goes.

@arail1 said:

Thanks Jeff. 10.5 will still be a good upgrade for him.

I have lots of machines at my desk and at home and one of my test machines is a Powerbook G4 laptop running 10.4 Tiger. Sometimes I'll test something on that computer and forget to switch back over to a primary machine! Raw computing power aside, it works fantastically. I think you'll be very happy with Leopard on a PPC G4.

@john.warburton said:

Restoring the original configuration was painless. And seemed to take only a few minutes.

Great! I've seen it take an awfully long time on some systems, but I'm glad yours was fast. The 'old' way of doing reinstallations was so terrible in comparison to this. When it works, the recovery partition is awesome. When doesn't it work? When your hard drive is failing and the recovery partition is Swiss cheese.

@unknownuser said:

The hard part was finding out how to do it!

This is my number one complaint with this procedure; it's different on all machines. I don't even know how to do it properly on my home computer, so I have to hack it into working using a partition editor.

@unknownuser said:

Silly me for thinking that I should use the "Recovery Disc" that came with the PC. No, I needed the "Application & Support-Disc". The "Recovery Disc" is used to either repair the existing installation or to replace it with a completely new installation.

You're lucky they even gave you any discs. I don't know of any other manufacturers who provide them anymore.

@unknownuser said:

SU 7.1 Pro was the first app that I installed. It went on straight away, no problems.

What a relief! I was 100% certain it would, but my wife had me a bit rattled when she asked me on Friday, "What happens if he does all this and it still doesn't work?" I didn't have an answer.

@unknownuser said:

A long weekend now getting all my other apps on and validated, then several hours re-installing the data. Don't you just hate computers?

Having caused plenty of problems for myself and run into countless others caused by bad software and hardware throughout the years, I've wasted a substantial amount of my life on such endeavors. And yet, I still keep coming back! What is the definition of insanity again?

Best of luck with SketchUp 7.1!

@mark carrabbio said:

Attached are some of the errors.

With regard to the problem of the Windows Installer being unable to write to C:\Config.msi... I know this issue has been quiet for a while, but I was searching about this earlier today and found a hint that may be helpful, so I wanted to share it.

There are some forums where people have suggested that this error is a result of the MSI service not being registered properly. To see if that's the case, you could try the following procedure and then retry the operation that was failing.

1. On the “Start” menu, choose “Run”.
2. In the “Open” box, type “msiexec /unreg”, and hit ENTER.
3. On the “Start” menu, hit “Run”.
4. In the “Open” box, type “msiexec /regserver”, and hit ENTER.

That will re-register the MSI server, possibly repairing the error.

@edarchitect said:

I have a similar problem. SketchUp 7 has been crashing on the first load of the day. It seems to work fine on the second and subsequent loads. It also occasionally crashes with the Ctrl key down. So I went to "Add and Remove Programs" to do a repair. The repair process stopped when it couldn't find googlesketchup7.msi. I searched my computer and couldn't find that file anywhere. Can you tell me where to find it?

I didn't want this topic to die forever without any workable solutions, so here's an update. I'm writing it specifically to address the quoted issue, but the general logic probably applies in a wide variety of situations.

On Windows, the installer for Google SketchUp uses the Windows Installer technology. That's the case any time you see an MSI file. Ours is wrapped by a self-extracting EXE to make it smaller, but it's an MSI under the hood. An MSI is simply a specially created database file that is processed by Windows Installer in order to perform orderly software installations.

Any time Windows Installer performs an installation, it saves an incredible amount of information in the registry and its internal database, possibly up to and including the entire original MSI file. It does this in order to provide a mechanism for performing reliable uninstallations, repair installations, or upgrade installations. That data is put into a special repository that is referenced later when those operations are selected. This is normally totally hidden from the end user.

In fact, the way our installer is structured, if you're performing an upgrade, it actually upgrades all of the files and then uses the MSI database to uninstall all files that were put down by the previous installation but are no longer needed for the upgrade version. In this way, it actually performs an uninstall operation during an upgrade, without you even noticing. It's pretty slick when it works.

Here's the problem. If the Windows Installer database becomes corrupted, it is possible for the critical data to get lost, causing all sorts of problems down the road when repair, uninstall, or upgrade is attempted. Registry cleaners are also frequently culprits for messing up the Windows Installer information for programs. In some cases, the original MSI data that was saved during installation is deleted, or the registry keys that hold links to that data are deleted, so Windows Installer doesn't have access to it anymore. Then, when you try one of the operations I mentioned before, Windows Installer gets confused. Although it wants to continue, it can't until it's given access to the original MSI that contains all of the critical installer information. Windows Installer assumes the MSI may just be on a network drive that's no longer accessible, so it displays the dialog as mentioned. Although you may be able to work yourself out of the problem by actually finding the original MSI and providing Windows Installer with the path, that's a difficult and error-prone process.

Instead, in such a situation, it is probably best to perform an uninstallation of the broken product.

The first way to do this is from the Add/Remove Programs menu. If you can uninstall from there, great! Just do an uninstallation and then install the new product.

As mentioned in the quoted issue, sometimes that option is unavailable (which again, is caused by Windows Installer database corruption or missing registry keys). In that case, it may be possible to use the original installer for the broken product to perform the uninstallation. You would literally re-run the installer for the original program you installed and choose "uninstall" instead of "modify" or "repair". For instance, if SU 7.0 M1 is broken and you're trying to upgrade to 7.1 when you discover it, then you would want to try re-running the installer for 7.0 M1, at which point you may be prompted to uninstall or repair the installation. Since you're running from the original installer, the Windows Installer database should have access to everything it needs and be able to uninstall or repair cleanly. After that, you could then run the SU 7.1 installer without any problems.

If the previous suggestions don't work or are not workable solutions for you, there's another choice. I have never used this program, but Microsoft recommends it in many situations and I found that companies such as HP and Adobe also recommend this for repairs.

Microsoft has created a Windows Installer cleanup utility:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

Clearly, we can't take responsibility for anything you try to do with this. However, in situations where the SketchUp installation is broken (or any other MSI-based installation, for that matter), you may be able to use this utility to uninstall all previous records for SketchUp, after which you should be able to run the SketchUp installer again and see that everything installs as expected. Although it should leave your preferences in place, there's a chance that those could get messed up. You'd also be subject to losing plugin installations, etc., requiring some work to re-install those items. But, if you're in a bind and there are no other options, this might be a life-saver to get you working again.

It is important to stress that errors like this are not due to a deficiency in the SketchUp installer, but are caused by corruption in the Windows Installer database or in the registry, sometimes due to other programs' installers, registry cleaners, or other out-of-the-ordinary circumstances.

This won't be of any help to those who have reported the problem before, but I hope it will be of use in the future.

@genki.tt said:

When I check the /Library/Receipts/ for the second time, there is no more 'Google_SU7_*'. But I could find 'InstallHistory.plist' updated.
I use SnowLeopard(10.6.1), is the receipts file handling change?

I'm sorry, I missed the part about Snow Leopard in your previous message. Yes, the receipt handling is different for Snow Leopard.

Before I tell you how to uninstall and reinstall, I need to make sure I document the procedure properly for myself.

I am in the process of re-installing Snow Leopard on one of my test machines. I will try to finish this tomorrow, then perform the tests, and write you back with the correct procedure.

Sorry for the trouble.

@john.warburton said:

I came across a lot of posts on various forums that identified 80070057 as an HTTP proxy error. I'm assumming that this is the same as the code with the hex prefix and not a completely different decimal code.

I suppose it's possible that Windows Update is failing due to a proxy error, but of course, since the part of the SU installer where your installation is dying does not access the internet, the proxy settings wouldn't impact the issues you're having with the VC++ 2005 redistributable.

@john.warburton said:

The second solution recommended is to do a clean reinstall of Vista, which is about where I am at anyway. By 'clean' it seems that I have to remove the current installation first, presumably to be absolutely sure that the new installation does not pick up any crud from the current installation. To be sure, I think a format of the HDD is in order.

Again, it's a bummer that the job would require such an approach, but I do think it will fix your problem. Note that if your computer came from a big manufacturer like Dell, HP, Compaq, Gateway, etc., with Vista, it's almost a 100% certainty that there will be a recovery partition on your drive. The recovery partition contains a complete copy of Vista, exactly as it came from the manufacturer. If you boot in recovery mode, an automated system formats the main partition of your hard drive, copies all of the files over, and thereby restores the machine to factory spec. NOTE OF COURSE THAT THIS WOULD DESTROY ALL OF YOUR DATA, just like a regular format/reinstall would, so you need to back everything up first. Depending on the manufacturer of your PC, there are different ways to enter recovery mode. Just Google it the procedure. It takes a couple of hours to do this, but it's easy and reliable; I've done it lots of times with good results. Of course, if your PC is custom-built, there won't be a recovery partition and you'll have to reinstall from DVD.

Good luck!

@genki.tt said:

To see the default initial screen, I backuped my following files(folders) and remove all SketchUp7.0 related files. (maybe..)
/Applications/Google SketchUp 7/SketchUp.app, LayOut.app, Style_Builder.app
/Library/Application Support/Google SketchUp 7/SketchUp(f), LayOut(f), Style Builder(f)
/Users/[user name]/Library/Application Support/Google Sketchup 7 (f)
/Users/[user name]/Library/Preferences/ (sketchup named plist files)

I wrote the Mac installer, so I can tell you that it is not necessary to remove all of the 7.0 files before installing 7.1. You should not have any problems upgrading from 7.0 to 7.1. If you do choose to remove all of your old 7.0 files first, that's OK, but there are more files that you must remove:
/Library/Receipts/Google_SU7_*

Those are the package receipts, which tell the Mac Installer.app which programs you have already installed. If you remove all Google_SU7_* receipts, your machine will forget that you installed it previously, forcing it to do a clean install when you run the 7.1 installer. That should result in a "clean" installation.

@genki.tt said:

First, I clean installed SketchUp 7.1(FREE), making screen shot, then overwright SketchUpPro 7.1.

I'm sorry; I don't understand what you are talking about with regard to a "screen shot", or why you would install the Free version of SketchUp, only to overwrite it again with the Pro version. The actual SketchUp application is identical in both versions, except for the extra plugins that come with Pro. If you don't need or use those plugins, then there is no reason to switch between the two versions. Since I wrote the Mac installer, let me also tell you that it is also not appropriate to try to install both Free and Pro at the same time. You will likely confuse the system and yourself if you try to do that.

@genki.tt said:

Finishing the work, I start rebuilding my environment (only my template files, no additional plugins),

I don't understand what you mean by rebuilding your environment.

@genki.tt said:

but 'Window - Style ' dialog is something wrong.. Dialog's title is not 'style' (it names 'Generic Browser'), and no style icon appears, can't select style, flashing pulldown list, etc. I try to re-install 7.1PRO, but cant't fix the problem. Fortunately, I had a 7.0PRO(R1) installer, so I try to 7.0PRO install first, then overwrite 7.1PRO, then I could fix it.

It's no wonder that something is going wrong if you are arbitrarily removing and re-adding files, installing 7.0, then 7.1, then trying to remove one, and continually messing around like this. I cannot think of any good reason for you to do this kind of thing.

@genki.tt said:

Is the 7.1PRO installer needs 7.0 pre-installed?

The 7.0 and 7.1 installers are both entirely standalone. You do not need to install 7.0 before installing 7.1. You also do not normally need to try to remove 7.0 before installing 7.1.

@genki.tt said:

I did something wrong?

What you did wrong was to mess around so much with the programs, continually trying to install and uninstall different versions. Now the system is a bit messed up. To fix this, remove all of the directories you mentioned at the top of your message, and then also remove the receipts that I specified. After that, decide whether you want to use Pro or Free and run the installer. Then everything should be fixed.

@genki.tt said:

In case of tring to install 7.0(FREE) then 7.1(FREE), style browser doesN't come back... what's happning? is this the bug?

By this point, with as much as you've messed around with the configuration, it's impossible to say exactly why you are seeing this. Just uninstall everything completely, then install the version of the software you actually want to use. This should fix everything.

@john.warburton said:

Well, I managed to uninstall the MS Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable without encountering any errors.

That's a step in the right direction!

@john.warburton said:

Installing the latest version failed, though, with an error suspicously similar to the SU installation error.

D'oh. I had really hoped we might get lucky by installing it outside of the context of SketchUp, but this is what I was afraid of. The pre-packaged Microsoft assembly just can't be installed for some reason.

@john.warburton said:

Windows Update has ceased working too (with a useless generic error code 8000FFFF.) This may be due to my over aggressive use of a registry cleaner, though. Unfortunately restoring my registry backup did not fix this.

Unfortunately, that is often a problem with registry cleaners. I know there are a lot of proponents out there who suggest the use of registry cleaners, but I'm not one of them. I recognize the occasional need to clean things out, but in my experience, registry cleaners cause more problems than they solve. These days, with almost all programs using Windows Installer to perform their installations, registries stay a lot cleaner than they used to. That being said, I am a proponent of reinstalling Windows from scratch every couple of years on computers that get a lot of use, just to be sure everything is operating at peak efficiency. Full reinstallation is something I prefer over registry cleaning.

@john.warburton said:

I have a current backup and details of my software installations, so I am thinking that reinstalling the OS from scratch is my only solution at this point.

I'm guessing that right now isn't an optimal time to perform such a procedure, but it may be necessary if you wish to continue installing SketchUp 7.1, or any other software package that requires the newest version of the Visual C++ 2005 redistributable package. The newest version of that package came out in July, so there are lot of software vendors who are in the middle of migrating over to using it in favor of the old one. SketchUp may be the only program you've found to give you this error so far, but it's only a matter of time before you try to install something else that requires it and run into the same problem for that program as well.

Good luck.

@holmes1977 said:

My next step is to try and download it from another location. then transport it back to my computer via usb stick. Hope that works. Just got a large job to do, which the update would help out truck loads.
I'll post back with the results.

Although tedious, I think your plan is a good one. You need to make sure you're able to download the file error-free and in its entirety before you're going to be able to install it. Using the MD5 hash is more reliable than relying on the self-extractor's built-in check, too, so I do believe you're on the right track.

I'll look forward to hearing how it goes.

Andrew

@holmes1977 said:

hi all
Just tried to download the lastest update (SU 7.1)
The file downloads ok, but when I go to run it. The install fails, and says Extraction failed file is corrupt
After some research on the net. I decided to try and use firefox instead of Win Explorer to download the file. I didnt have firefox installed on this computer. So I downloaded it, pressed run and the same message pops up.
Has anyone else had the same problem.

Jonathan,

The SketchUp installer is a self-extracting executable. It has a small amount of built-in checking to prove whether the extraction is completed properly. If it says there was a problem, that means during the process of downloading, some of the bits being sent from Google's download servers to your machine became corrupted. The only thing you can do is download it again from scratch and see if you have better luck the next time.

One option for ensuring the file is OK is to check its MD5 hash. If someone authoritative tells you what the MD5 should be, then you can run a program that performs a mathematical check on the file and produces a hash as output, which you can compare to the value you expect. If the value matches, your file is good. If the value does not match, you need to delete the download and try again.

I expect you're downloading Google SketchUp Pro 7.1 for Windows:
http://dl.google.com/sketchup/GoogleSketchUpProWEN.exe
The MD5 hash for that file is:
6cae8b7bcd469936273d3bd8d58cbf1d

If you get a free MD5 checker for Windows, you can run it on the file you download and see if you get the same string as above. If not, your file is corrupted and you need to re-download.

I've never tried the following MD5 programs, but they both look reasonable:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/File-Management/MD5-Checker.shtml
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Security-Related/WinMD5Free.shtml

I hope this helps.

@john.warburton said:

Thanks Andrew, but I have not received any PM's. Last one in my inbox was in February.

John,

Something is apparently broken with the forums. I did send you a PM the other day and I even went back to my sent messages to reference it the next day and it was still there. Now however, the message is no longer in my sent items and in fact, I don't even get the option to send you a private message; it's as if you're blocked. I wish I knew what happened to that message, as it took me a long time to write. Oh well.

The problem is with the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Runtime module. For some reason, Windows is not allowing you to install it. This is not a problem with SketchUp, as we simply distribute the Microsoft-provided installer for that.

Of course, you take responsibility for any troubleshooting steps you decide to take and any fallout that occurs as a result. It's all at your own risk... That said, here's something you can try.

Rather than reinstall your whole OS, a better approach would be to start by trying to manually uninstall any existing copies of the MS Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable package and then reinstalling the newest copy from the web. If you can do this successfully, you might get SketchUp to install cleanly without tripping over the component you're stuck on at present.

In the add/remove programs menu, look for something having to do with Visual Studio or Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable. If you find it, uninstall it. It'll be nice if you can uninstall this without any problems, but since it's an MS module that other programs on your system may already rely on, the system may not let you uninstall it.

After you've uninstalled, or if you don't find it already installed, or if you can't uninstall it, then move forward with installing the newest available copy:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766a6af7-ec73-40ff-b072-9112bab119c2&displaylang=en

Note that there are different versions for 32-bit vs 64-bit, so you have to get the correct one for your OS.

After you've installed the newest version of that package, try to reinstall SketchUp and see if it works for you.

@unknownuser said:

I can honestly say I have never had as many issues with any previous version of sketchup, I am on the verge of walking away from this program for good. I have not got a single item completed and system stability is also now suspect. I really have had enough of this and then some.

Mike,

I believe SU 7.1 is the most advanced and most stable verison of SketchUp I have had a part in producing. Based on the number and type of BugSplat reports we are receiving and the general feedback seen in the forums, I believe the statistics back that statement.

I, and I'm sure many others, would be interested to hear the specific types of problems you are encountering, the platform you're working on, etc. A few people have found that problems with their hardware or video drivers caused instability with SU 7.1 until those were upgraded, but then the problems have gone away. There are a wide variety of things we could try to do to help if you are willing to post some of the details of your experiences.

Best of luck.

@fletch said:

Great work Google SketchUp team, and all beta testers hard at work back there... SketchUp just took a giant leap for me today.

Fletch,
Thanks for the kind words. The SCF forums here are filled with particularly advanced SketchUp users and have lots of opinions about what they want to see in an upgrade. As such, it's not often that we get such uplifting responses. I'm glad to hear it's working well for you!

@john.warburton said:

It looks like I'm heading towards a complete reinstall of Vista and my software. A couple of days at least that I can't afford.

John:
I sent you a PM yesterday with other suggestions, but have not heard back. Try those first...

@mavie said:

Regarding LayOut 2.1 warnings, has anyone found that the old layout templates are suddenly unchangeable? I click on the titleblock entities, and nothing is alterable. Is it just me?

Are you using a Mac? Starting in LayOut 2.1 on Mac, we're storing the templates in a different location; a place that is not normally user-editable.

This is an intentional thing. You shouldn't be editing Google-provided templates.

If you want a slightly modified or customized version of something we provide, you need to save the template to another location, make your modifications to that copy, and then update your user preferences to look for templates in the additional directory. That will ensure you don't muck with Google-provided templates, while still giving you every bit of functionality you desire with regard to customization.

I hope that helps.

@drsunglasses said:

Anyone know how to disable this? I've tried deleting the keychain entries, but they just show up again when I start SketchUp and it asks for a password.

What specifically would you like to disable? Are you concerned about SketchUp writing the keys in the first place, the fact that it wants repeated access to your keychain, or the fact that the password prompt keeps appearing?

The interactions that will occur in this circumstance depend on the settings of certain security preferences you have set on your machine, so I just need more details to understand what you're trying to accomplish. For instance, if you have enabled the application firewall, you're going to have to enter a password before SketchUp can access your keychain, whereas there may just be a prompt to ask for approval, or no prompt at all, in various situations.

I will say this to the paranoid among you; SketchUp can only access the keys in your keychain that you provide access to. When the OS displays the warning to say an application wants to see your keychain, it does tell you which keys it wants to see, so that's how you know it isn't doing something fishy behind your back.

The keys SketchUp saves in the keychain are various session IDs that are vital for features that use built-in browser interaction. I can't think of any reason to be concerned about them or want to remove them. I'd like to know what has you concerned...