Announcing new features to SketchUp 2019 and LayOut!

We are thrilled to announce our second desktop product update since releasing SketchUp 2019! We’ve been listening, and are happy to deliver a new set of features and improvements based on our users’ needs. With your feedback, we’ve worked hard to update some top features in SketchUp Pro 2019 and LayOut. We’re proud to introduce these new improvements, and see how they impact your 3D projects.

Please note that all of these features are available to active SketchUp 2019 Classic license and active subscription users with the exception of the “Large Area Imports for Add Location” feature below. This feature is only available to subscription users.

SketchUp

With more focus on improvements to imagery exports, usability, and a seamless LayOut connection — your professional workflow will thank you.

Exporting images. Exporting 2D graphics, raster files, and animations just got better. You can now control the overall line thicknesses of exported images with our new line-scale multiplier, found in the export options dialogs. So, if you are experiencing line weights that are too thick, you can make those line weights thinner. Also, .png images now export with transparency so you can see what is behind the material while compositing.

Customizable unit settings. Now your model can be customized to show different unit measurements for area and volume. For example, in a model of a room, you can use inches for the wall and feet for volume. Available unit types: inches, feet, millimeters, centimeters, and meters.

Invert Selection. This new feature will allow you to select anything, then invert the selection of objects. This makes it simple to select items and then perform actions on their inverse. The keyboard shortcut for this will be: CTRL + SHIFT + I (Windows) or CMD + SHIFT + I (Mac).

Importing files. The days of picking out your import file format from a long list are over. You can now drag and drop ALL supported file types directly into your modeling window. By default, you’ll now see all supported file types available for import. Additionally, the DWG and DXF importers now bring in fewer duplicate and messy edges. Easy!

Eraser Tool. Have you ever accidentally erased too much in your model? To make your detailing workflow a little smoother and seamless, we added alt & cmd as modifier keys to remove any unnecessarily highlighted lines that you might have accidentally captured during your modeling efforts.

Large Area Imports for Add Location. You can now easily import large sites at full resolution. How can you take advantage of this new feature? Simply zoom out a bit, then select the level from which you want to import. Be aware that importing very large areas with lots of imagery can adversely affect performance in your SketchUp model. Note that this feature is only available to SketchUp Pro and Studio subscription holders.

There’s a lot more, read about it on our blog.

LayOut

We focused on making the usability of LayOut more natural and consistent with that of SketchUp. Clean. Easy. Productive.

Isometric dimensioning. It is now possible to make linear dimensions align with an isometric viewpoint. This one is huge! Since an isometric drawing is a primary type of drawing in LayOut, we wanted to make it smoother and more straightforward. You can now control extension lines, gap distance, and align dimensions with isometric angles.

Auto-text. Similar to “smart labels”, you can now add text to dimensions without breaking the automatic measurement. For example, let’s say you create a wall dimension. You can dimension a wall, add the word “height”, and the dimension measurement will still update if the measurement changes. Pro tip: make sure your string has <> in it. For example, ‘Height <>’ will turn into ‘Height 132in’.

Please note that all of these features are available to all active SketchUp 2019 Classic license and active subscription users with the exception of the “Large Area Imports for Add Location” feature. This feature is only available to subscription users. If you have an expired M&S for a Classic license, you can access these new features by updating your M&S.

Get the full list of product updates on our blog.

Download the new features!

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Don’t forget drag and drop import of all supported file types!

Edit: Wops; it was already listed.

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It’s listed. A great addition!

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Brilliant, I’ve found myself needing that many times.

And the days of swearing blind that I put it in that folder, so where is it? “Oh I forgot to search for the correct filetype” again.

Excellent, looking forward to trying all of that out.

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Chris has already posted this in the Extensions section but I’m bringing it up here too to make sure it is seen by the people it affects.

In this new version (2019.2) the C++ API has been removed. If you are using certain rendering extensions in SketchUp they may not be compatible (yet) and it may be a good idea to wait to upgrade SketchUp. For more info, read Chris’ thread linked above.

If you are not using the affected extensions you are good to go. Enjoy the drag and drop importing!

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“Note that this feature is only available to SketchUp Pro and Studio subscription holders.”

I have a classic licence, with active maintenance.

Does this mean I have to switch to a subscription based payment plan in order to use this feature?

Yes Pro and Studio Subscription holders get the additional ability to specify deeper levels of imagery aka “Large Area Imports”. This functionality is surfaced via the import level slider shown above the import button in the attached image. The result would be that the imagery imported into SketchUp would be 4x higher (2x per additional level) than what is shown in the imagery view.

Everyone else still has access to add location but imports are limited to the level you are viewing (WYSIWYG).

I just checked and VRAY is working fine :slight_smile:

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@IanT
It’s a very welcome addition for the different reported units for length, area and volume in the Model Info > Units settings.
But there is currently only one Units ‘precision’ setting available.
This is not really much use - e.g. if I dimension lengths in mm I’d expect it to show as 1234mm [rounded to nearest whole mm], but the area of a face might then be showing 2m², when it’s really say 2.44m², and the volume reporting displays the same issues…
There is space to add the other units precision, so hopefully this can be sorted asap in another update…

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Yes good point, I think I requested at some point to have a drop down in entity info to switch the units of area and volume to ones desire. Maybe In a SketchUp live.

I had a quick look earlier and the way it’s been done in model units is pretty tidy. But rightly as you say we are stuck to one level of precision. My model units are (mm) and 0.1 precision. My area and volume are preferable in (m) but still at 0.1 precision. It’s close for estimation but the lack of coarseness over many items can quickly add up I suppose depending on just how accurate need be.

There’s always room for improvement, “they’ll” be reading Im sure…

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So why is large area import a subscription only feature?

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I have SketchUp Pro 2019, not 2019.2 with it’s features. Yet when I check for an update it says I have the latest version.

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Hi bkelly, we traditionally announce the release on the forums, blogs and through social media a couple of weeks before we turn on the in app update.

This lets us ensure everything is going smoothly before the majority of our users switch over.

Got it! Thanks.

Pretty excited about this update. I’m a Pro user so I tried updating through the app then tried downloading Sketchup Pro again. Would be great if Sketchup could be more explicit with their release dates and version numbers.

…and how does it compare to Placemaker?

Hey Derek

It’s a financial reason - Trimble has to pay yearly licensing fees for Add Location Imagery and the Large Area feature makes it very easy for people to import much more data. As a result, we’re not able to expand what we offer to perpetual license holders. Please stick with me for a few more lines as I explain further… We DO realize that many perpetual license holders also pay our yearly Maintenance and Support fees. The primary problem is that the perpetual license system in SketchUp can’t know whether a perpetual license holder is current on their M&S subscription. That really starts to matter as the desktop application ages. Think about users on SU 2017 and SU2018. We essentially provide perpetual access to what is now "basic "Add Location for those users at an ongoing cost to us. It also matters for piracy. We haven’t had a good way to block services like Add Location for pirates. So in order to protect our ability to best serve our most loyal customers, we decided to rebuild many of our business systems and move certain features to our subscription offerings.

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Why would this matter to 2017 and 2018 licenses since this is a feature of 2019.2? No matter. The feature is not that useful anyway.

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This Add Location improvement is similar to PlaceMaker’s basic imagery offering. PlaceMaker is currently delivering Mapbox imagery where we provide Digital Globe imagery. I think the resolution is comparable to ours but PlaceMaker has a limit on how many tiles can be imported during your annual subscription. PlaceMaker (basic subscription) also offers additional data types like vector data such as building footprints, roads, vegetation and water which we do not offer at this time.

For an additional fees, PlaceMaker also has high quality imagery add on package (goes to zoom levels 19 & 20+ where available) and 3D building services.

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