More than likely, you are not running SketchUp 2017 as an administrator. In order to make a directory anywhere under the Program Files folder, you must have admin rights in Windows. In general, storing user documents of any type under Program Files is discouraged by Microsoft. We finally corrected where SketchUp reads and writes content files (like materials) in SketchUp 2017.

If you are going use a custom Materials folder other than the SketchUp 2017 default, I would suggest placing it under your Documents folder where you have read and write rights, even if not running as an administrator.

Hope that helps,
Tyler

Sorry for the confusion guys. We often "soft release" things where we update the installers you can find on our sketchup.com/download/all page, but we don't increment the updater system that notifies users in the application. We are in the process of doing that today, so later this week the Check for Update functionality in the application will work as you would expect.

Thanks for you patience,
Tyler

Hey guys -

Nothing to fear here in regards to SketchUp's Add Location feature. SketchUp uses the Google Maps API, not the Google Earth API. Google Earth the application is not going away.

Google's announcement that they are ending the Google Earth browser plugin ("Google Earth API") is a natural consequence of tightening browser security models. Most modern browsers are dropping support for any form of plugins over the next couple years.

Fortunately, much of the functionality of the Google Earth plugin has now been incorporated into Google Maps using more modern browser capabilities like WebGL. This is the same technology we use to do 3D views of SketchUp models on the 3D Warehouse, and it does not require a browser plugin.

So, nothing to fear here and it is all a natural progression of technology.

Thanks,
Tyler

Yikes Ken!

That is disturbing that you are not being sent to the download all page when you click on Download Now. When you do that, SketchUp should be popping up the download all page in your default web browser. What is your OS and browser?

Is anyone else seeing this behavior?

Thanks,
Tyler

@bmike said:

Guess you have to go get it 'manually'?

[attachment=0:3g8mdq0x]<!-- ia0 -->Screen Shot 2014-11-04 at 10.06.20 AM.png<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:3g8mdq0x]

Yes, for the moment. We typically wait a day or two to make sure everything is running smoothly before turning on the update service in previous versions.

Hey Tim -

Any chance that you have unicode characters in your username on the machine? We just found a bug yesterday where are xml parser is choking on file paths with unicode characters. We're working on a fix now.

-Tyler

Yep. We've posted the new installers, but have yet to push the updater mechanism. We often wait a couple days to make sure things are stable in the wild before enabling the Help > Check for Update mechanism.

Regards,
Tyler

This issue should now be fixed with version 2013.0.4124 that we released today. Please let us know if you see any problems.

Thanks,
Tyler

@penguin2 said:

Toolbars for Plugins missing.

Loaded the following from EW:-
'Selection Toys'
'Edge Tools2'

Tried un-checking then re-checking in Toolbar list. Still not visible.

We're working on a fix for this now. It was a last minute regression that slipped into the release. Sigh. Sorry about that.

-Tyler

@charly2008 said:

If we are to trust the tool, "Test time display". Then would be "Sketchup 2013," a bit faster. Whether this also has an impact on the plugins I can not judge.

I see someone has been playing around with their registry settings...

-Tyler

We are indeed working on a fix for this in SketchUp 2013. It was a last minute regression that snuck in. Hopefully our fix will address a number of the initial toolbar state issues.

Regards,
Tyler

Hey folks -

Just wanted to pop in an say that we do indeed follow the posts here and very much value your feedback. SketchUp is a large application and sometimes you have to shore up the foundations in order to better move forward. We've done a lot of that with this release, while also trying to make SketchUp a better platform and a better documentation and presentation tool (LayOut). Keep the feedback coming (yes - the negative stuff too!).

Regards,
Tyler

Hmmm... I don't like hearing that 2013 is having trouble opening a SU 8 file. In this case, however, I know why. SketchUp 2013 has an entirely new image handling library with all the latest format-specific libraries compiled in. In general, these updated libraries are much more strict about handling images (for security reasons). That said, I really wish we were handling the image rejecting properly and not crashing. We'll set up a unit test with this texture and see if we can get a fix in place.

Thanks,
Tyler

@jorge2011 said:

a question.
The new Spanish version is available for download?

because from the page ( http://www.sketchup.com/intl/en/gsu8/download.html ) can only download version sketchup8 m3

Hi Jorge -

We'll have localized versions of SketchUp 8 M4 ready in a few weeks.

Regards,
Tyler
Trimble SketchUp

It is safe to assume John is rolling his eyes in the front cover picture because of something I said At least, that is the way it usually goes.

@rich o brien said:

@thomthom said:

@rich o brien said:

That 3D orbiting feature is pretty cool. Not sure if it's new though

It's WebGL! Anyone else done that for SketchUp models?

That I know I was just unsure if this 3D viewer was new/ in-house developed or just using One already out there.

The Viewer was developed by the SketchUp team. It is not off the shelf technology. As ThomThom correctly points out, it is WebGL based. This technology is still pretty green, but holds great promise.

Hi Hellnbak -

I have a new Win7 box and it has a Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 in it. SketchUp absolutely flies on it.

Tyler Miller
Eng Manager - Google SketchUp

@dan rathbun said:

[My understanding, is that there very few (and perhaps only 1 person,) still at Google from the old @Last "posse."

Hi Dan -

Is this really your understanding? I guess I should name those of us who are from the old @Last posse who are still at Google and still working hard on SketchUp.

There is John, Sue, David, myself, Pat, Paul, Steve and Jeff (developers)

Then there is John and Bryce (product managers)

Then there is Aidan, Tasha, Tyson, Greg and Helen (marketing)

Then there is Nancy, Chris, Tommy and Steve (sales)

Then there is Jody and Tommy (support)

I suppose I probably missed a few there, but hopefully the message is clear. SketchUp development is alive and well, with a majority of the former @Last posse still dedicated to it. Add to that the talented people we've been able to hire since joining Google and it is quite a team.

-Tyler
Engineering Manager | SketchUp
Google

@mitcorb said:

@chrisjk said:

I should like SU to handle geometry in small dimensions accurately, without needing the work-around of scaling up/down to fix it....

I apologise if this isn't considered a performance issue.

I agree here. And if it is not a performance issue, perhaps one of the SU team can comment as eloquently as you have on previous posts, so that us laymen can understand, and put this and the tiny triangles matter to bed.

Whatever the answer, I believe folks will appreciate it.
Best Regards,
mitcorb

The small dimension issue is not a performance issue, but I feel your pain. Under the covers, SketchUp represents all geometry in inches with 64-bit floating point precision. When dealing with floating point numbers in applications like SketchUp, you have to establish a tolerances for things like length, angles and planarity. In SketchUp's case, that tolerance factor for length is 0.001 of an inch. Below that threshold, two lengths are considered equal. In practical terms, that means that SketchUp does not support edges that are less than 0.001 in length. SketchUp was originally designed for architecture and it was not conceived that users would want tolerances lower than 0.001 of an inch. Changing it now, while theoretically possible, could have disastrous effects for existing SketchUp models.

That said, the issue is on our radar and does get discussed around here a fair amount. If we can see our way to a solution that works for new and old models, then we'll try to fix it.

Hope that helps,
Tyler

Thanks everyone for your replies. I'm thrilled the 7.1 performance boost is working out for most of you.

We'll continue to spend a large portion of our time dedicated to performance improvements. We have not hit a ceiling as of yet, and as many of you point out, when you remove one bottleneck, it often unmasks the next bottleneck.

One thing to note, SketchUp has a very unique geometry engine that requires us to merge any new geometry in will all the other geometry in the same component. This is part of what makes the SketchUp magic possible, but it can cause as slow-down when adding any significant amount of new geometry, or even a small amount of new geometry into a component with a lot of existing geometry. Importing, or using a Ruby script that is creating geometry makes this issue really noticeable. We'll continue to look for ways to optimize this area.

Thanks again,
Tyler
Google