Dimensioning in Layout wildly different from the Sketchup model

[clearplanmodeling]

I’ve read a few previous posts regarding this (or a similar) issue.

Using 2023 Pro.

The dimensions in Layout are wildly different than the Sketchup model from which the LO viewpoint is derived. A 2’ 6" dimension in the model is dimensioning as 6’ 8" in Layout.

I’ve double checked that I’ve got top view parallel projection correctly in the Sketchup scene that the LO view is based on, but still the dimensional busts.

Itried completely purging the LO file after deleting the SU reference, still the issue.

Hmmm…ideas?

03_25.5.19_trellis dimensions.skp (1.5 MB)
Luk framing detailing.layout (3.4 MB)

[DaveR]

What part in the model is supposed to be 2’ 6" long?

When I select the Dimension tool I see you have turned off Auto Scale and have the scale set to 1:64 …

…but the scale for the viewport is set to 1:24.

Turn on Auto Scale or set the Dimension scale to 1:24 and you should get the right dimensions. I’d recommend just using Auto Scale so you don’t have to think about it if you go to dimension another viewport that has a different scale set.

[PaulMcAlenan]

Have you setup a 1:24 scale in Layout…?

[clearplanmodeling]

hmmm… I’m not aware that I’ve done anything differently than 100 times before, when I didn’t encounter this problem.

I’ll have to investigate.

At the moment, I’m reinstalling SU yet again (5th time since the start of the year?). I think I spend equal time trouble shooting SU as I do actually producing work.

Very frustrating. I’m about to throw in the towel and go get a job at the local Ace hardware. This isn’t good for my blood pressure.

Thanks Dave.

[bmike]

@clearplanmodeling

I’m reinstalling SU yet again (5th time since the start of the year?). I think I spend equal time trouble shooting SU as I do actually producing work.

This doesn’t have anything to do with reinstalling, as far as it seems from Dave’s post. You simply have made operator error in how the dimensions and viewport are setup.

[clearplanmodeling]

I understand that doesn’t have anything to do with Dave’s suggestion, his suggestions being pretty spot on all of the time. Yours, too, Mike. This community here is about the only thing that I find always positive about Sketchup, because the software itself always seems to be a beta release at best.

[bmike]

Why are you re-installing so often? It doesn’t make sense to me…
I get the occasional bug splat and crash, but generally things work as intended.

[clearplanmodeling]

Branding spanking new install today. By the time I reloaded the extensions I use constantly, set up shortcuts, re-establish my template, about 3 hours.

I finished up a little after noon, about an hour ago.

It just crashed… I was using John Brock’s PDF import plug in, an absolute must have for my daily workflow.

It’s constantly crashing.

[bmike]

You must have some plugins that are fighting with each other. You could try installing them one by one and figuring out which one might be causing an issue.

But, IIRC there were some issues with 2023 and M1 Mac’s. Why not try 2025 (with the new extension migrator!) and see if it works better. It will install into its own folder, so you can always go back to 2023.

I would try 2025 before messing around anymore with 2023.

[ateliernab]

so… instead of searching what plugins may or may not cause extra crash risks, you’d rather spend another 3h to recreate the exact same situation ?

mokay.

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if you car doesn’t start, getting out and back in and trying again won’t solve it.

[clearplanmodeling]

I tried 2025. Several times. It was buggier still

[clearplanmodeling]

I’m not a mechanic, I don’t work on my car. It doesn’t start, I call a mechanic.

Making sure the extensions play nice with one another is the developer team’s job, not mine.

It’s not like you install an extension and it immediately causes a problem. I can work for hours or days, with my extensions, without apparent conflict. Until there’s a crash. And, who’s to say it’s not an issue between two extensions but rather a number of them, taken together.

Apple has developer and interface guidelines. Judging by the differing interfaces across extensions, it’s obvious that Trimble does not have interface guidelines.

I’ve built custom homes all my life. The projects generally devolve into a hot mess because the plans are never cross checked by anyone. Sketchup strikes me as pretty much the operating method. If I didn’t have 15000 - 20000 hours into working with the program (figured at 30 hours per week over 15 years - probably short of the actual total), I’d find something else to use. But at 70, I’m not gonna live that long

/rant

[ateliernab]

@clearplanmodeling

Making sure the extensions play nice with one another is the developer team’s job, not mine.

there are Thousand of plugins out there. you can’t expect every dev to check if their plugin works well with every combination.
I have about 50% of my plugins deactivated at all times. things I need once in a while and that I don’t need to keep active.

@clearplanmodeling

Apple has developer and interface guidelines. Judging by the differing interfaces across extensions, it’s obvious that Trimble does not have interface guidelines.

Sketchup does too. and just like with apple, devs can just choose to ignore them. they are guidelines, not enforceable rules. that’s especially true with some devs that are only on their website / sketchucation. that’s the great thing about open systems.

Installing a plugin in sketchup is just like installing a software on your mac. did you only install official apple apps or did you install apps from third party devs ? did you download it from the official app store or did you get it straight from the dev’s website ? are the apps optimised for your current os ? can they conflict ?

@clearplanmodeling

Until there’s a crash. And, who’s to say it’s not an issue between two extensions but rather a number of them, taken together.

well when SU crashes, first you need to send the bugsplat report. then you can check the logs to see when it crashed, or come here and ask Colin to please take a look.

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[RTCool]

I understand the frustration. About a year ago, DWG import was crashing my SU 2022 (in this thread). With no plugins, it worked, and I spent over a day testing and diagnosing which plugin might be the culprit, and eventually, nothing was conclusive or solved, so I just moved on to a new installation of 2024. Then I saw it again in December, I guess. Now I’m on 2025 and it seems Ok for the moment, but … who knows.

I’ve always relied on PowerCADD to open vectored PDF’s, but that’s not really an option for other users, at least at the moment. Adobe Illustrator can do it and output DWG, if you happen to have that. Haven’t check Affinity.

[clearplanmodeling]

@ateliernab

there are Thousand of plugins out there. you can’t expect every dev to check if their plugin works well with every combination.

And yet, somehow, the user is supposed to be able to sort that out?

I actually don’t have that many extensions installed. I counted 15 and I use each one almost every day. All of them from well known and regarded sources: Christina Eneroth (the most useful set of tools out there), ThomThom, John Brock, Dale / Mindsight, Nathaniel Wilkerson etc.

According to Chat GPT, 15 extensions results in over 32,000 possible combinations that may not be working well together and causing the crashes:

“Expecting an end user to debug which of the 32,767 possible combinations of installed extensions might be causing instability is completely unreasonable. That responsibility should fall to the platform developer to sandbox, isolate, or at the very least log and report faulty interactions in a user-comprehensible way. Extensions are part of the SketchUp ecosystem by design—users shouldn’t have to become QA engineers to keep their tool stable.”

Maybe it’s a Mac problem, maybe Sketchup is more stable on windows. But I’ve been in the Apple ecosystem since the original Macintosh way back in, what, 1984?

My first experience with Sketchup was when it was originally published by @Last way back when. Granted, it took many years, and lots of patient education from Dave R and others here on this forum, to even start to approach proficiency with it.

The promise of it, with its intuitive nature and shallow learning curve is a real stand out in modeling software. I can model anything with it (custom homes). Revit snobs are always blown away with the models I produce.

After reinstalling yesterday, along with the small number of extensions I use, it is stable. For now. But I know from experience that at some point it won’t be.

Thanks for the discussion.

[ateliernab]

sorry, didn’t pay attention to the /rant.

I shouldn’t answer threads where people rant. I’m willing to help, not to talk to a wall.

[bmike]

@clearplanmodeling

After reinstalling yesterday, along with the small number of extensions I use, it is stable. For now. But I know from experience that at some point it won’t be.

It’s not a Mac problem, but it could be a problem specific to your Mac with the extensions you have installed. Are you running the old vs. new graphics engine? Is there a common thing that causes the crash?

You can test this for yourself and it would be faster than re-installing (still not sure what that has gotten you).

Disable 1/2 of your extensions, restart and work.
If if crashes, disable another 1/2 of what is active.
Restart and work, etc.

But you could keep doing this re-install thing, which clearly is not helping.
Are you using 23.0.366 Version?

[clearplanmodeling]

“Old vs new graphics engine”. I think the new graphics engine is only in Sketchup 2025? Maybe I’m incorrect there. Under SU prefs, I’m not seeing a choice from which to select.

The SU version I’m using is Version 23.1.341, according to the “About” menu.

Since the crashing / hanging is seems to be something that builds over time, it’s not feasible to disable half my extensions and wait for a crash. They are an integral part of my workflow. Would I test for an hour? A day? A month?

What will happen, as it has happened many times over many years of use, is that having just reinstalled yesterday, along with the extensions I use almost daily, is that SU will probably work just fine for a certain period of time. A week, maybe a month.

Then, it will hang with some action I’m initiating, that I’ve initiated many times already without incident. Sometimes I do think that I am trying to move too fast and I’m not giving the app enough time to complete the last thing I did before doing the next thing.

It will then start hanging more frequently (“app not responding”), I’ll start force quitting more frequently. Sometimes, if I walk away for 15 minutes, the hang will “self correct”. But, I can’t just walk away from working all that often in the hopes that whatever is going on will resolve itself.

When I force quit, I will then reopen SU then quit again. Sometimes it crashes on quit. So, I open / quit again, repeating as often as necessary, until I get a “clean” quit. Then I’ll open again and go back to work.

I don’t know that this does anything useful.

Interestingly, this most recent spate of hangs I traced to TIG’s(?) Section Cut Face plug in. A plug in that I have used constantly over the years without a single incident. I uninstalled, downloaded a fresh version from Sketchucation (same version # I had been using), and was able to go back to working.

I honestly don’t know what to think, Mike. I only know that all of this is causing me to fall further and further behind on the information my clients are relying on me to provide to them. And, as I tell them that I’m (again) having software issues, I become concerned about their confidence in my work. As do I.

I appreciate your input. At the end of the day, I’m losing confidence in being able to run a business using Sketchup to illustrate plan and construction issues I find in their project’s plans.

[bmike]

I think that this is the most current 2023.

Are you signing any Bug Splat reports with your email? If you do @Colin can look them up and get them to the right team member if there are issues they see.

Are you using TIGs section cut face in Auto Update or manual update?
Do the native sections not work for you?

I use SKP and LO every day. This is on my desk today:

Mac Studio M2 Max, 2025.

I mean, keep crashing and working and wasting time, or spend 1/2 a day diagnosing maybe if there is a plugin that is causing this?

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[colin]

The new graphics engine came in with SketchUp 2024. In 2025 there were new features added, to give more photo realistic materials.

I don’t see any bugsplats from you for 2023 or 2024, but it looks like you tried 2025 in the middle of April. The one bugsplat you sent in then has been looked at by one of the developers. He’s away for a few days, so I can’t ask him what he thinks of the crash.

You’re using skeng and flextools. skeng looks like it’s up to date, I’m not sure about flextools. If your current projects don’t use the features of those extensions, you could try turning them off, and see if SketchUp is any more stable.