I need to find a way to get the same SketchUp preferences on all users systems. Having users manually import settings is not a good option. Is there a preference file I can copy to a new system that will contain these custom preferences?
Open the Window > Preferences dialog.
Set all the keyboard accelerators in the Shortcuts panel.
Set the resources paths in the Files panel.
Then at the bottom of either panel, use the “Export…” button.
A file browse dialog appears suggesting the file name “Preferences.dat”, but you can make a different name. (But the “Import” dialog will likely default to looking for a “.dat” file.)
Copy (or save) the data file to a thumbdrive, or some place on a network share (or a thumbdrive.)
Caveats
The paths SketchUp uses do not honor environment variables. So for example, the path
“%USERPROFILE%\Documents\SketchUp\Styles\”
will not work.
But the path
“C:\Users\Dan\Documents\SketchUp\Styles\”
does work.
It is also unlikely that
“~\Documents\SketchUp\Styles\”
will work correctly.
So this makes it difficult to have one file for all users. Unless they all share the same folder paths beneath the %ProgramData% path. (Note that write permissions in this path require administrative privileges.)
But this can work well for all folders except, “Models” and “Export models”.
- Try setting the common ones, and leave these two above blank ?
(Moving to Feature Requests category.)
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if Windows and all installations preferrably in the same program directory (typically "\Software\SketchUp\SketchUp 2016") and with no or the same extensions installed:
export the registry branch of SU with e.g. our free support tool ‘BackUp Prefs’ and edit the REG file with a text editor accordingly:
1.) delete complete section “[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SketchUp\SketchUp 2016\Application]”
2.) delete or adjust section “[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SketchUp\SketchUp 2016\File Locations]”
3.) delete complete section “[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SketchUp\SketchUp 2016\Recent File List]”
on the destination system make a backup of the prefs first and then import the reg file created above by double-clicking or using the support tool.
no guarantees, use at own risk.
I know this is an old post and this answer might be a little off what the poster was looking for but it might help someone in the future, I had an issue with importing the preferences file because it was changing the file location settings and not just the shortcut settings. I was able to open the Preferences.dat in Notepad and remove all text starting with the [File Locations] line and below. I was then able to import just the shortcut settings on their own.
That’s one way to do it. Alternatively, when you export Preferences.dat, you can click on Options and deselect File locations. That’ll save you having to edit the .dat file.
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I didn’t know that option was there, thanks, Dave!
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