In Preferenes/Files/Components I've shown my components to be in E:\Dropbox\08 Sketchup\Components, but when I open SU they don't appear.
The same problem with Materials.
I've put them in Dropbox to conserve space on my C:/ drive which is an SSD.

If I have to put these files in C:\Users\Bob\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp\SketchUp 2018\SketchUp, what's the use of the file preferences?

Sorry for the high-jack

Raylectron
Very interesting: but, IMHO, tutorials without voice-over are pretty much useless. All they do is show that someone who knows what they are doing can do great things, but do little to instruct someone new on HOW to do it.

@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 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!!

Outstanding! Much easier to use. Thank you!

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.

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 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

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?

I cannot find TT_Lib2 listed in SketchUcation Store

@torel said:

So what change can make a licence key invalid?

• reinstall Sketchup for some reason (e.g. on a new machine)
• upgrade Sketchup version, e.g. from 2016 to 2017
  In these cases please contact me at ropefall@sketchrope.com and I will generate a new licence key for you, free of charge within the one year maintenance period.

Since I upgrade SU each year and make/buy a new computer about every 18 months, having to apply for a new license each time is really not viable.

I often have multiple SU sessions open at the same time. It's almost impossible to know which "Default Tray" goes with a given instance. Can the file name be added to the Default Tray top bar? Not the whole path, just the file name.

@dave r said:

When you installed SketchUp, did you right click on the installer and select Run as administrator? If not SketchUp is not installed correctly and this could be the cause of the trouble. Are you getting Bug Splats?

This is REALLY important. I was having all kinds of weird problems. When I reinstalled using Run as Administrator all of my problems went away.

It's not as colorful as the ArchTools version but clf_extended_views.rb works just fine in SU Pro 2017 and Win10

@dave r said:

How much more do you need? It isn't a complicated thing.

As the continued discussion shows, it apparently it was and continues to be unnecessarily confusing.

Sorry TIG, but IMHO the length of your excellent clarification just illustrates that.

The meaning of a keyword should not change from one important dialog to the next.

Yet nothing has been done in five years to fix it.

I suppose there are more elegant ways but:

Select the edges, make them a group and drape them onto a flat plane?

Or, if you have the Q Align plugin, select the edges and make them all the same height?

The first way always works and automatically provides the surface.

Instead of this when the individual panels are minimized:

Why not have it automatically collapse to this?

I didn't know that!

Thank you

EDIT
You were certainly right about the necessity of loading as Administrator: I'd been having some weird things happening, nothing major but annoying. They disappeared after Repairing.
I don't recall ever reading about it being mandatory.
Thank you again.

@dave r said:

.... and choosing Run as administrator.

Why?
In all the years I've used SU I've never done that.

Just curious.

@pixero said:

The great thing is that you can scale a selected object or image without rescaling the entire SU scene.

That was true before the change to having to use ctrl. I have often built up a scene by building part of it and then bringing in a photo containing a dimensioned line drawing then scaling it to "real" size: the rest of the models in the scene were not affected by the rescaling of the picture.