SketchUp has never had a ‘Network’ version (just like there is not a real trial version). With the growing number of small firms and collabs it would be nice to have an inventory of commonly known issues and feature requests.
example: Trimble ID - Use of Company’s extensions
We now need to log in to the Warehouses to get extensions or contents, for instance. It would be nice to have a ‘Company account’, log in with that account and then manage all extensions or folders and collections…Employees could be logged with their individual TID, but could switch to the company’s account.
example: Filelocations
Set up the filelocations for everyone:
Templates (a working one:)
Materials, Components etc. (the usual stuff)
Project location (this would be set, preferably in the…
example: Projects - Panel
Yes, we do have extensions that manage references, but it would be nice to have some sort of general ‘Project’ settings. This General Info could be used (as autotext tags) in LayOut.
(this might be a general FR for all versions, not network-specific…)
Note: I am aware that many or all can be implemented by extensions, but that’s not the point: IT managers have to worry about a lot more programs then SketchUp alone.
The way we circumvent this is by working locally only.
Instead of working on files located on a server or other machines, we work on files located on our SSD/secondary disks.
We use file sync software to synchronize files between computers in our network and every computer has the same relative pahts for templates, assets, and working files.
The main benefits are:
Permanent backup of working files on multiple computers where redundancy is guaranteed;
Easy access to recent versions of the files on computers that haven’t synced yet.
Fast saving and loading times on working computer as it’s using SSD and not saving through network speeds.
The main problem is that you have to perform a sync action before reloading and you have to invest in disk space for each computer. When either of these becomes a real issue we do work directly on the computer that is managing the main files for the project.
A better way to manage references would be great, especially because of the duplication of materials and sub components that sometimes occurs when performing a reload of a component.
Honestly we try to keep things controlled by having the least amount of references possible.
SketchUp using/supporting relative paths for linked components would be nice.
A path that is “C:/Users/Eneroth/SketchUp/SomeProject/Components/Car.skp” on one machine might be “H:/Documents/SomeProject/Components/Car.skp” on another, when all we need is “Components/Car.skp”.
Network extension licenses would be good too! I’m sometimes asked about this and the only thing Extension Warehouse offers is for the company to buy single seat licenses for every third computer or something like that.
Well coming from an AutoCAD based background I like the File Locations model but I know that this is not an ideal set up for everyone. I know in Acad I can share our plot style tables (for example) across the network so all users can have access as well as them keeping their local one.
