I just installed SU 2016. I don’t see “Extensions” as a menu choice.
And how do I transfer the extensions I was using 2015 to 2016?
Thanks for any help
This is a frequent question at every update. Since extensions can become incompatible with an update, the advice is always to reinstall all extensions after an update. Both the Extension Warehouse and the sketchUcation store provide tools to help you do this en-masse instead of one-by-one.
What are the tools to help install en-masse?
When I tried installing one by one
I tried searching on both Extension Warehouse and SketchUcation store and couldn’t find some of the plug-ins I have been using with SU 2015.
e.g. I have been using a plug-in called Add Hidden Layer which adds a layer that is hidden in all scenes. Can’t find it now.
There are quite a few others I can’t find.
Seems like it would be good if SketchUp had some way to keep track of what you have installed in the last version (and if possible either get the latest version, or check if it is compatible, etc.).
The Extension Warehouse keeps track of the extensions downloaded from your account. If you click the little down arrow to the right of your name and choose “My Extensions” from the drop down, it will show you what you have downloaded and also which ones are marked as compatible with your current version of SketchUp. Note: it usually takes a while before all authors mark their extensions as compatible with a new release of SketchUp.
The sketchUcation Extension Store’s Extensions Manager and Plugins Manager each allow you to create sets of extensions/plugins. You can save the sets locally and reload them later. It also notifies you if there are updates available. You have to do the work to create the sets, but a set is also useful for enabling and disabling groups of extensions/plugins that you use for a particular workflow or only occasionally.
The two techniques above can handle extensions and plugins downloaded from their own stores, but they don’t know about rubies you may have downloaded from other sources. Regarding automatic upgrade, this is the horse that is out of the barn. No existing tool can do the work of tracking down the source of every extension and plugin you might have installed. So, there is usually some manual work required.
Thank you. That was very helpful.
Regarding plug-ins that are not available on Extension Warehouse or SketchUcation (although I thought I got some of the ones on SketchUcation that I can’t find now), can I copy the .rb file from the previous SU version to the plugin folder for the new SU version and install with Window>Preferences>Extensions? (of course running the risk that it is not compatible).
To install using Window->Preferences->Extensions you need the .rbz file, not the .rb. And it does not need (or really want) to be already in the plugins folder. If you don’t have the .rbz any more, you can try copying the .rb and any associated folder directly. Unless the extension/plugin saves info in some custom folder as it installs (which only a few do any more) that should work. But, as you note, you do this at your own risk.
The main changes in the extension Ruby API from 2015 to 2016 are the introduction of the signing system and a revision of the observers library. If you leave the extensions policy set to “unrestricted”, the former won’t have any affect. The latter of course has no effect on extensions that don’t use observers, though you might not know which do and don’t. The bottom line is that the majority of extensions from 2015 will work fine until/unless you elevate the security policy.