Layers not loading on startup

I have had some challenges lately opening sketchup files and not seeing the layers. The icon, or layers window (?) is there but it doesn’t display any of the layers. If I close the file and re-open it they usually appear but, ■■■■, it’s really annoying. Would this be a sketchup issue, or an operating system issue? Any light you could shed on this mystery would be greatly appreciated.
If it helps diagnose the problem, I’m running Sketchup 2014 on an i-mac (mid 2011), OSX, 10.9.4, 12gb memory.

Do you mean like this? If so, click on the stripe and it will open.

Hi Steve, Thanks for the quick response but, no, I wish it was that simple. When I open some sketchup files and I go to open my layers it’s totally blank. I enclose a screen shot of the sketchup file I’m working on at the moment and you’ll see 6 layers, as well as layer 0. On some files there’s nothing there except the top bar (including the + and - symbols). It’s very strange because if I close the file, quit sketchup, and start over, the layers will usually reappear. I just don’t want to have to do that the majority of the time. I’m guessing you’ve not heard of this issue before? If you have any other suggestions on how to resolve this I’m all ears.Thanks again,Michael

Well, so much for the quick fix! This is a new one to me. Do you have any layers management plugins or extensions loaded? That’s the only explanation other than an outright bug that I can imagine, since layer0 is built-in and can’t be removed based on your model; an empty layers window is illegal.

Steve

Steve,I don’t have any extensions or layer management plug-ins loaded. I may have led you astray a bit, I believe the layer 0 is there, just nothing else. I don’t know if this layer thing is related to some other issues I’ve been having (I presumed they were related) but I’ve been having an excessive, I mean EXCESSIVE, amount of bugsplats (drawings crashing), and when I close one sketchup file in one folder, and try to open another from a different folder, the previous one will open up too. Not the end of the world in the overall scheme of things, but if both sketchup files are bigger than, say, 80mb, …CRASH!, another bugsplat. I have to end up putting the original file I closed in the trash and open the second one, then put the trashed sketchup file back in its folder. What a time waster!Could these be related? That’s why I thought there may be a systems problem rather than a sketchup problem per se’. Thanks so much for looking into this, your help is greatly appreciated.Michael

Have you tried SketchUp 2015 yet ? You can install it side x side with 2014.

(Once the new version is released, there are usually no more releases of the older versions.)

Aha, more info. This sure sounds like either SketchUp or your system has gotten corrupted. There is no normal way that two files would get entangled in the ways you describe.

You might try renaming the SketchUp plists (or move them to another place) and see whether that helps. They are in
~/Library/Preferences/com.sketchup.SketchUp.2014.plist
and
~/Library/Preferences/com.sketchup.SketchUp.2014.LSSharedFileList.plist

If that doesn’t help, I’d try reinstalling SketchUp 2014 or as Dan suggests, moving up to 2015.

Steve

Hi Steve, Well, this might be a clue to the problem…I do not have the “/com.sketchup.Sketchup.2014.LSSharedFileList.plist” in my Library/preferences. I will try reinstalling Sketchup 2014 but am waiting to install 2015 (as Dan Rathburn suggests) because it is incompatible with my Podium rendering plug-in (I did try installing 2015 once but the menu bars for podium would not show up). Thanks again guys,Michael

So just install 2015 without Podium, just to test it for this issue.

You can always add the Podium plugin later when the 2015 compatible version is released.

And by the way, you can backsave (SaveAs,) to v2014 SKP from v2015, and do your rendering in SketchUp 2014, in the meanwhile.

that might be due to a system preference (default system pref)…
if you mean you crash sketchup, then launch it again by double-clicking a file, all the other files that were open at the time of the crash will open too.

System Preferences → General

(though your exact description sounds different)