Components Library (sorting by type and architectural style)

[donneyclark]

Any recommendations on how best to organization the Components library? I have been thinking about sorting by type and architectural style.

(Also, Components library is stored within User\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp. Would there be a better and easier place to store it and other SketchUp libraries?)

[MikeWayzovski]

Create a resource folder and in it, create the folders based on the items you have in Windows->Preferences->Files (minimum: Components-Materials-Styles)

In those subfolders, you can create more subfolders, but I would not nest to deep.

Set the apropiate path in the Preferences and in the Component (or Material or Styles) panel, click on the little blue detail button and choose ‘open collection’ go to the folder and look for the created resource folder.
Once chosen, you can add it to your favorites with the same detail button.

[DanRathbun]

@donneyclark

Also, Components library is stored within User\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp . Would there be a better and easier place to store it and other SketchUp libraries?

Yes this is the best place (on MS WIndows,) and is called “the User Resource folders” as it is in the user AppData path. However it is actually …

%UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp\SketchUp <version>\SketchUp

And on Mac …

~/Library/Application Support/SketchUp/SketchUp <version>/SketchUp

In recent SketchUp versions, SketchUp will automatically enumerate the “Materials”, “Components” and “Styles” folders in the current running SketchUp version’s AppData path … and make them available to their respective inspector panels.

@MikeWayzovski

… in the Component (or Material or Styles) panel, click on the little blue detail button and choose ‘open collection’ go to the folder and look for the created resource folder.

This should be unnecessary now. Any folders in the AppData path subfolders should appear in the top level listing in the inspectors now.

@MikeWayzovski

Set the appropriate path in the Preferences …

This controls where save dialogs open up only, not where the inspector panels look for files.
(The path for “Classifications” also controls where the dialog opens when loading a classification XSD file.)

However, it is smart idea to have them sync’d to the same place and only temporarily change where you’d be saving files. (Say if you’ll be spending a day creating materials of a certain species and want the save as dialog to open into your “species” sub-subfolder to save you time. When done with the task you’d reset it to the “Materials” folder in the AppData path.)

[MikeWayzovski]

@DanRathbun

Yes this is the best place (on MS WIndows,)

For a single user with one setup, maybe. I found it easier to share a (not hidden) folder with collegues or myself outside the AppData folder. A google drive location or server is also not that problematic, since the filesize of materials and components are not to big.

[DanRathbun]

@MikeWayzovski

I found it easier to share a (not hidden) folder with collegues or myself outside the AppData folder.

On a single workstation, this would be the %ProgramData% path and I think will also be automatically accessible to SketchUp’s inspectors. (Not to be confused with the %ProgramFiles% path.)

@MikeWayzovski

A google drive location or server is also not that problematic, since the filesize of materials and components are not to big.

I was just reading a thread last night where reality is the opposite of your opinion. The Guz was saying they were seriously looking into problems with very long startup times … viz:

20 min launch time - SketchUp Pro 2018

Those are all great suggestions. I’ll sum up what I would suggest starting with a potential fix followed by maintenance suggestions. The first two only apply to Windows systems. Materials Window - A painfully long start-up time is an issue experienced on some systems and we have been looking at very closely these last few months and we are working on a permanent fix. In the meantime, we have discovered a significant difference in load times when the Materials window is kept contracted and onl…

SU Slow to load models on a powerful Windows system?

This is something we’ve been evaluating pretty heavily lately and may have narrowed down the culprit AND have a workaround until we get it fixed. We seemed to see an unusual number of slowness issues on machines with very powerful specs; specifically on computers with pro-level video cards (Quadro, FirePro). The issue can be described as “It takes a long time for my models to load… longer than it did on my old machine”. If this issue sounds familiar, please try this. If your Materials tray is…

[MikeWayzovski]

The threads mentioned do not talk about the file locations of the materials, but only if the panel is extracted upon opening. The autosave and ‘live’ saving to dropbox location etc. is about the Model, which location is set to the User Documents folder (local)
Models tend to grow in size, and the size is usually the culprit in the exchange.

[DanRathbun]

Jack I’m not against what you are needing. Shared resource support has been a long standing complaint and request for better network resource features have been long asked for.

As evidenced by Guz’s posts, they are looking into fixing problems in this regard.

I’m all for the fixes. And even on single-user systems, it is tedious to have to migrate your resources every time we install a new version of SketchUp.