Exporting/Sharing Toolbars and Custom Trays

LayOut
1

I have a bit of a problem with Layout 2015 and I’m hoping someone has a quick answer. I run Sketchup Pro and Layout 64 bit on my workstation. I have always setup my computer to run Sketchup as the Administrator with another user I call “Sketchup”. Why you might ask? Well, my main Windows 7 Ultimate, 64 bit operating desktop has many background operations and programs running whenever I am logged on. I have always setup another user (me) on my system with just the minimum of background programs running; avoiding any graphic conflicts and also freeing up all the resources for Sketchup, and now Layout to utilize. Additionally, prior to Trimble acquiring Sketchup and coming out with a 64bit version, resources were always ram limited. Older versions of Sketchup (I started back with version 3 over ten years ago) were very limited due to the Windows operating system just a few minor steps away from their DOS origins.

This has always works well when I am doing extensive modeling or animations, which are then imported into Adobe Premiere. For simple modeling or tutorials I use my main Administrator user, but for more complex tasks I use the “Sketchup” user.

My problem has always been duplicating the exact toolbars for both users. Typically, I just get an image of the toolbars and recreate them for each user, but that is very time consuming, and if you make a change to one, it will not appear for the other user. I assume if you have a network license, there is some way to sync the installs, but I have an individual license.
FYI: the workstation is one I built, i7 running at 4.2GHZ, 24GB Ram, Dual Quadro FX4800 graphic cards, numerous 10K Drives.

2

Hi-

The custom toolbars are saved in a user-specific directory by default, and I don’t know of a way to change this in LayOut itself. A network license doesn’t affect this. My user-specific directory is C:\Users\mdurant\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp\Sketchup 2015\LayOut.

For the initial step of bringing one account up to date with the other, you could just copy the contents of this directory from one user to the other. Obviously this won’t keep the toolbars up to date unless you perform this copy every time a change is made.

An alternative would be to use some Windows or file-system trickery to make both user accounts look in the same location for these files - I’ve never tried this, so I can’t guarantee anything. Perhaps some Windows power-users will chime in?

Thanks,
Marc

3

Marc,
Thank you for the info. I normally share databases in Sketchup, but I have not that with Layout. Obviously there is a specific file that contains the layout of the tool bar, but that always is the mystery, which one. I will try to find out if I can share that particular file between users, or create a shortcut to it, and update the other users folder. I will report back if I am successful, since knowing which files contain that information would mean that you could possibly use it for future installs or reinstalled programs after a crash, assuming you did not have a backup of that particular drive.
Thanks again,
Louis