@box said:

Your preferences dialog is appearing off screen, have you recently changed your monitor layout?

Go Window/Preference to get the focus on the dialog, then hit alt and space together, then m, then tap any arrow key once and without clicking anything, move the mouse around until the preferences dialog appears on the screen.
While you have it there go to Workspace and hit the reset workspace button.

Holy mackerel...you are a life-saver! Yes, we had been adjusting monitor layouts recently.
Thank you so much!

My Monday morning was perked up by this truly weird issue.
In a working model or a brand new model...everything works fine...draw...copy, rotate...camera view...but...
Go to Window/Preferences. As soon as Preferences is clicked, the top toolbar grays out, and the whole program locks. Cannot even click the X in top right corner to close. Need to go to Task Manager and force close.
Anyone else experience this? We've tried re-installing Sketchup but no luck.

His blog appears to have stopped four years ago.
I sent him a PM but I'm not optimistic that he will reply.
If anyone could share the rbz or has an alternate extension I would sincerely appreciate it. Without this plugin, the cleanup work on previous scenes is so painful.

Jim
Cannot find this any longer. Not in the Extension Store and the manual download link on your blog doesn't work for me.
This is a super valuable tool for me and switching over to 2018 I've lost it.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

@pixero said:

Is this it?
https://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=56648

Edit. On his blog he only has a Add hidden layer script.
http://sketchuptips.blogspot.se/p/my-plugins.html

yes- that's it. However, when you hit the link to the Extension Store, it's not there.
And when you use his manual download rz file...that's a dead link too.

It's such a major oversight in stock sketchup....not having a toggle when you create a layer that prevents it from being added to existing and/or future scenes.
And now my lifesaver is gone.

Doing the painful process of switching to 2018.
Trying to find my old fried "JF ADD LAYER".
Can't find it on Smustard, SUC here or the Extension Store. Any ideas???

All fury at Trimble put side...Does anyone have a realistic way of importing any other higher quality 3D and jpeg imagery? Are there any possible workarounds at all?

I am planning to purchase Daniel Tal's new PlaceMaker extension as it contains the Open Street Maps imagery data...plus added features. The imagery to me looks like it's not as clear or crisp as Google Earth but better than the Digital Globe drek.

@dave r said:

@sketch3d.de said:

@juju said:

Which country may that be?

probably USA.

Or maybe Latvia.

DG
[attachment=1:2rcrt2n2]<!-- ia1 -->Screenshot - 5_10_2017 , 8_44_22 AM.png<!-- ia1 -->[/attachment:2rcrt2n2]

Google
[attachment=0:2rcrt2n2]<!-- ia0 -->Screenshot - 5_10_2017 , 8_44_37 AM.png<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:2rcrt2n2]

It doesn't look better to me. It looks like the color saturation has been pumped up on the DG. And the level of detail is far greater on the GE...even in your screenshot- I can count windows and floor levels. Look at the the detail of the DG. It's not there,

@alpro said:

Yes I can get better images and terrain data like lidar or dem but how do I get that into Sketchup? Without 10 different work arounds. Might as well go back to Autodesk. And I still feel I have the right to be frustrated with Trimble no matter what Google did, after all it's been Trimble that I have given my money to for the last 5 years and in return I'm getting an inferior replacement for what I consider an important aspect of the software.

Absolutely agree. It's like someone shooting a photo with a cellphone and saying..."hey, this is top quality-its 30 megapixels". Yeah, and it looks like garbage. Without any hyperbole, it is fair to say that the DG image resolution is radically inferior to GE. Many of you may not care...you may not even use the feature. It is in integral par of my daily workflow. I cannot build existing conditions off that fuzzy imagery nor do I want to include it as part of a graphic presentation to a client. It would look like I just took a giant step backwards to them.

It's the most basic tenet of marketing. NEVER take away something from a customer. ALWAYS give them MORE AND BETTER OPTIONS. (and or course charge more money for added quality)

@dave r said:

You should be frustrated with Google. It's they who are removing the option to use their imagery.

Not at all. It seems highly likely that google would SELL the data after five years and Trimble did not want to pay Google their rate. So they waited four and a half years for the market to provide something free or nearly free and they didn't get it. So they've given us this useless fuzzy garbage. This is NOT data that anyone should be paying for. There is VERY high quality satellite imagery available, with resolutions even higher than GoogleEarth...Trimble just won't pay for it...or give us the option to pay for it. I could be wrong but I'd bet a pizza that I'm not.

Digital globe probably does have high quality imagery...but why isn't Trimble offering it to the customer base?
We are used to a fairly high level of resolution from Google, and new we get this fuzzy crap to work with. (I encourage everyone to go and examine the difference between the two before the May 22 deadline). As a professional, I'm fine if they need to charge for the highest resolution. But to not offer customers ANY good options is infuriating...and it's going to really affect my work and presentation for the worse. I'm surprised that there is not way more discussion about the issue here.

UPDATE: from reading Trimble's statements on the actual SketchUp forum, they claim that they are providing the highest level of resolution available from DigitalGlobe. They claim the problem is that DG captures imagery via satellite, and so resolution is inherently lower than that from GE, who uses planes. As I user, I could care less if they use drones or oil tankers...I just need high quality data...and DG is NOT!

The quality of the DigiGlobe is dismal...just a bunch of fuzziness. And the Trimble Map is nothing but extremely basic street maps...almost zero detail. Worthless to me.
This is REALLY a serious setback for those of us that use crisp ortho imagery in presentations on a daily basis. Completely frustrating. Trimble buys this fuzzy mess? It doesn't seem worth anything.
Not a happy camper.

So due to licensing issues with Google and Trimble, we are losing google earth "Location Snapshot" and "Location Terrain".
Instead, we will be getting Trimble Map and DigiGlobe imagery. (both have 2D and 3D)

The Trimble is just junk...very basic street maps with no detail and no ortho imagery. Essentially worhless.
The DigiGlobe, from what I have seen, is fuzzy and completely sub-par. Although GoogleEarth imagery quality varied from location to location, in general, the quality, especially at "zoom in", was quite good and most of the time had enough detail to be able to building existing buildings and sites.

The DigiGlobe is fuzzy junk...super low resolution, even at "zoom in". There's no way I can use this in professional presentations. This is a huge step backward and I'm highly disappointed with Trimble for stranding us with such inferior data. They have had five years to arrange an alternative imagery source and this is all they can provide.

Interested to hear your thoughts and whether anyone knows of possible improvements or other options to obtain quality ortho imagery and 3D terrain.

You might want to experiment with the extension "CLF Greeble".

Greebles are random bumpiness in models. Think of large starships in sci-fi movies. All that crazy bumpiness and detail, from afar, is often created with greebles. A lot of apparent detail without large amounts of geometry. If your flyover is graphically conceptual, you can apply some random materializing. If it's photo-realistic, apply actual detailed aerial imagery of landfills.

In most of my models I have a long list of layers...longer than the menu typically can display at once. I use center mouse wheel to scroll thru to bottom or top as needed. In 2017, my ability to scroll is very limited. Once in a great while I can get it to happen, but most of the time scrolling does nothing and I have to sue the up/down arrows. No problems in 2016 and the mouse does not appear problematic in any other programs.

Any thoughts on this? So far I am not impressed at all with 2017

Just installed 2017 on Win10.
Arranged toobars. Upon reopening, they are all stacked over each other on the main screen ...only two or three docked where I last left them. Have done this twice. Running out of patience. Anyone else running into this?

I'm on windows 10, installed sketchup yesterday, and today it crashed simply opening the blank program. Not happy.

So I left the six nonfunctional links there. And added all the favorites from what is now a local folder. Checking thru them all...got thru the first six or so...and links were valid. then, as I selected other folders, the display of components menu remained the same...in other words, it doesn't change when I select new folders. And then go back thru the fist several, and not of those are functioning now either. Essentially, loading them all new from a local folder has made this a 100% problem instead of a 25% problem.

Any advice would certainly help. I'm out of my depth on this.

I have tried deleting all favorites. there are about six problematic ones where it appears a link has been broken. When those are selected, the option of Remove from Favorites is grayed out.
If I click on a valid Favorite folder, it brings up the template of components. If I then click on one of the problematic folders, the display of components remains the same (the previous set) and if I "Remove from Favorites, it deletes the good one but not the problematic one.

Confused. It appears that I just cannot delete these last six.

@dave r said:

The sort of thing you report is one problem with using DropBox or other cloud storage. Another commonly reported issue is failure to save because access/write times are too long. The general wisdom (and recommendation from the SketchUp team) is to keep files on a local drive. Dropbox is not local. If you need access to the files from another location, sync the dropbox folder to your local folder.

Editing the registry is not to be taken lightly.

Do this first: Copy the folders from Dropbox to your hard drive. Then remove them from Favorites allowing SketchUp to remove the ones from Dropbox. Then add the local folders on your hard drive to your favorites.

Please update your profile, too. It shows you are using SU8. Showing the correct version is useful to others when trying to provide you with assistance.

Thanks Dave. Will do. Have not been able to remove anything from favorites so far.