Im coming from Rhino and using Sketchup for some work lately, is there a way to attach the windows/trays to the main modeling window instead of floating? I cant seem to find a way, might be painfully obvious but I got nothing? Extension will work too but couldn’t find one. Thanks!
Nope. Tool palettes and the various windows/panels only float on the Mac. You can add a few buttons to the top row toolbar but you’ll soon run out of real estate there.
On my Mac I keep the main model window a bit narrower than the full screen and stack the window panels on the right side so their arrangement is similar to that on the PC. I generally leave most of the tool palettes turned off and access them through keyboard shortcuts or menus.
Dang…ok that’s irritating. Thanks for the reply.
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This is really frustrating as I use it on Mac as well and run fullscreen on a 1440p monitor and the menus constantly disappear or the model gets behind them. I’m going to try your workaround @DaveR.
I hope SketchUp plans to fix this issue in a future release, does anyone know if there’s a way to suggest this as a defect/feature for consideration?
Lots of us read these posts, and there are existing feature requests about making the interface be cross platform, and not to leverage the platform specific ways of doing things.
If you change your SketchUp window size, be sure to save your current window size in Preferences so that it opens the same every time you launch SU.
Thanks @eric-s, the menu issues are really annoying when coming from other professional programs, also the Materials pane is yet another type and won’t connect to the other panes even with the work around. Glad you all are working on this and thanks for the message!
Not a solution in any way, but consider that SketchUp Web can be seen as such a cross-platform uniform user interface.
Instead of using platform-specific toolkits or patterns, it has its own a SketchUp-branded style across all platforms. If built as an Electron.js app, it could run on the desktop.
Having external monitors means it never stays one way. In fact every time I open SketchUp it is as if the workspace has exploded. I have to search for the windows.
I have other (old) programs that have floating palettes. There are tool palettes that I always keep at the side of the main screen. They are always there when I launch.
SketchUp is the worst in this regard. But is it hard to adjust the Mac work space?
Compare to GIMP that is clearly a Windows port to Mac (open-source volunteer developers) , which misses a lot of Mac protocols. In GIMP you can have all your palettes stuck to the main screen–or you can have them separate palettes. No problem. GIMP will also let you set all the window to “dark” mode , or light. as you like.
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FYI - this is my setup. I dock my ‘floating’ panels at the top within the space allocated for toolbar icons. Tags is really the only panel I need or want open at all times. This helps me as it keeps my eyes centered on my main SketchUp window and maximizes my screen real estate. Cheers.
Actually, GIMP started as an X-windows application running on variants of UNIX. It was later ported to Windows and macOS. See wikipedia regarding its history.
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Thanks. for the info. My point is that GIMP has no problem providing a good Mac interface, while supporting other platforms.
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Still having the same frustration in October 2021.
Will never understand the differentiation of “normal” side toolbars and then the special colors/materials tab. First ones snap and get minimized easily, second one cannot even minimize, not talking about snapping in line with others.
The Colors panel/window UX/UI is actually being overridden by Mac OSX and therefore doesn’t operate the same as the other windows. The same is true for the Text panel/window. On a PC, the text and color panels dock the same as the others. Can be a bit frustrating at times but knowing it’s not anything you or SketchUp has done wrong hopefully helps.
Well, to nit-pick quibble, the SketchUp developers chose to tweak the Mac color chooser rather than program the whole as they had to do on Windows. As a result we have to live with the color chooser’s behavior.
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It would be nice to have a toggle to close the Mac color panel. (Is that possible? Am I missing something?). It seems it shouldn’t be done to conflict with the bucket tool command, but may be some other way.
It’s November 2022, this annoying issue still persists…
It is a non-issue on Windows. And SketchUp 2019 has been superseded by three new versions.
Loose palettes all over the place was a Mac thing in the old days. I guess people got tired of it, and Apple’s own software ( like Pages) dont do it anymore.
it is a non-issue on Windows, but SU 2022 still has the same issue on mac.