Howdy, folks. I work for a company that does built-in furniture that often goes wall to wall and/or floor to ceiling. So accuracy and good communication with the shop floor and installers is key. Been there just over five years so I’ve learned a lot. We just use SketchUp and Layout to generate Shop packets, and have used Google Drive, Trello and Monday.com.to keep things organized. Monday has been the best solution so far for handling versioning of documentation, among other things. Anyone have any tips they’d like to share?
Check out Trimble Connect.
It is part of your subscription and uses a safer system for your files than other cloud solutions. Lots of users come here to the forum with unrepairable files caused by external storage, whether it’s a USB stick, external drive, in company server or cloudbased services..
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Currently I’m still using dropbox to store the actual skp and layout files, mostly because it’s a platform the rest of the office staff is familiar with. We use Monday as a secondary location for pdfs of packets because it’s easy for co-workers of varying tech literacy to comment on the same file. Then I can revise and replace that pdf with a new version while still being able to see all previous versions and comments, which really helps when it can be months or more between a job approval and fabrication. Our shop staff is stretched thin, so that makes adopting new processes tricky. I’ll find something that seems like it’ll improve efficiency, but onboarding has to be very frictionless for the shop to even consider spending time on it. We only adopted Monday because our sales lead liked it for CRM.
As @tweenulzeven indicated, working on files saved directly to the cloud has proven catastrophic for many users. There are many posts on this forum in which users have asked for help recovering SketchUp files only to be told that their files are fatally corrupted. You can also have issues with LayOut trying to access references saved to the cloud.
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Are physical back ups also recommended or is the reliability of Trimble Connect fairly pristine? We’re a small company focused on furniture production so developing file protection procedures hasn’t been a high priority for management.
It is always good to follow the 3, 2, 1 rule with file management at a minimum. 3 backups of critical files across 2 different systems with 1 being on a physical drive you can access at your home or office.
Do not get me wrong though, Trimble Connect is very reliable. Sometimes I lose internet access if there is a storm though so I am always grateful to have my files stored locally in addition to Trimble Connect. Work does not stop for everyone else if my internet goes out and I do my best to keep going too!
Finally, I will end this post by saying that storage is cheap these days. Do not be afraid to make multiple versions of your file too. It is nice to be able to “roll back” changes to a previous version if something goes wrong. That has saved me some time on a few different occasions.
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Don’t do this for working files. Only for files that you want as references. All working files should reside on your C or local drive. I too use DropBox to share with about 10 different clients - I never work from those files for fear of having a sync issue or corrupt file issue.
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I think you’ve gotten good replies but just so you don’t think I’m ignoring you, I’ll add my tuppence.
Backups are never a bad thing. You should save the working file to an internal drive on your computer and save a backup to Trimble Connect. Each time you save the file to Trimble Connect it’s an incremental save meaning that you can access earlier versions if you need to. If you think there is a need to also save to DropBox or other cloud locations or save copies to an external (USB) drive, copy the file from your internal drive.
If you need to open a file that is saved in the cloud or to an external drive, first copy it to the internal drive before opening it. Opening files from Trimble Connect actually downloads the file to your computer before opening it. If multiple users need to be able to access your SketchUp files you can add them to your project on Trimble Connect so they can access and edit the files. You’ll be able to look back to see who edited a model and when if you need that information. You can also add a To Do list and other notes for the project as well as share links to models for clients to view or whatever you need.
If you aren’t doing it already, I would recommend creating a folder on the internal drive for the project. In it you would save any LayOut files along with all of the reference files for the project. That makes it easier and faster for LayOut to check those references when it needs to. Makes your file management easier, too. It’s a bit like stacking all the wood for a project in the same place so you aren’t hunting around the shop for the different parts. Replace the references when needed. For example if somone edits the SketchUp file via Trimble Connect, download their edited version and put it in the project folder. If the filename has been modified, relink the reference in LayOut to reflect the updates.
When the project is finished, you can copy the folder to DropBox if you wish to store it. Just remember, if you need to go back to edit the LayOut file, download the folder to your computer and work on the files from the downloaded copy.
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Thanks for the pointers, folks!
There is a desktop sync app for Trimble connect, so you have have it automatically keep a local copy and what is online synced up
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Yip total golden rule. I keep reminding my clients this to download it work local then save to wherever.
Ive Seen and experienced myself (once and never again) where alot of time intensive modelling gets munched up.
Stay 3D safe!
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What’s the cleanest workflow from a Trimble Connect SketchUp file into Layout? I’m the only person who works on the SketchUp files in our office. I tend to go back and forth between SketchUp and Layout when I’m doing documentation, which doesn’t seem like it would work well saving to Trimble.
Download the SketchUp file from Trimble Connect and save it into a project folder that also contains the .layout file and reference it from there. If for some reason you wind up editing the version on Trimble Connect, download the newest version to replace the earlier version.