It is necessary. From version 2017 on SketchUp requires a graphics card with full OpenGL hardware support. In earlier versions you could switch to software OpenGL rendering by turning hardware accleration off.
This indicates to me that docking your laptop to your current docking stations or port replicators tries to switch your Nvidia graphics off, for some weird reasons. Another thing that I saw with older Lenovo docks was that connecting your laptop could switch your display to using 16-bit colour instead of the full colour required by SketchUp.