Layout 2020 crashing at startup

LayOut
1

I’m having issues with layout crashing upon startup. I found a previously (now closed) thread from May 2020 which is quoted below. Is this still an issue in November 2021? and is this the only way to get into my file (by uninstalling it and installing su 2020.1.1)? Thank you in advance for any help.

"LayOut 2020.2 has a new issue that we are aware of and working on fixing, where it fails to cope with a document that is missing some of the linked elements in the document, and that leads to a crash. Previous versions were able to cope ok, which means that you may have been working on documents that had missing linked files without knowing about it.

The problem is being worked on, and should be fixed in an upcoming update to LayOut. For the moment the only solution is to open the document in an older version of LayOut. If the document is a 2019 or earlier one, and you still have LayOut 2019 installed, work on the document in that version. If you still have the installer for SketchUp 2020.1, your options are different on Mac and Windows:

On Mac you can go into Applications and rename the SketchUp 2020 folder, to SketchUp 2020.2 for example. That will allow you to work in 2020.2 on any other documents that don’t cause LayOut to crash. Then, run the SketchUp 2020.1 installer, which will create a fresh SketchUp 2020 folder in Applications. Use the copy of LayOut in that new folder when working on documents that show the issue.

On Windows there can only be one version of SketchUp 2020. To reinstall SketchUp 2020.1.1, first use the Add & Remove Programs control panel to uninstall the existing SketchUp 2020.2 version, then run the SketchUp 2020.1.1 installer.

In both cases your extensions, custom materials, components, and templates, will still be there.

If you don’t still have the 2020.1 Mac installer, or 2020.1.1 Windows installer, you can download them from these links:

Mac 2020.1: https://bit.ly/sumac20_1

Windows 2020.1.1: https://bit.ly/suwin20_1_1 "

2

The missing reference thing is typically caused by copying from one application, like SketchUp or a web browser, and pasting into LayOut. Doing that creates a reference pointing to a temporary file that will be deleted. There was a change to LayOut, I think with LO2021, that resulted in the pasted content becoming automatically embedded. LayOut doesn’t go looking for a non-existent file. The change may have been made in a late update to 2020 but I disremember. Which version of 2020 do you have? If it isn’t the last one you could go to Download All | SketchUp and get it. Then, when you install it, right click on the installer, choose Run as administrator, and if prompted, choose Repair.

Better would be to update to SU/LO 2021.

No matter what, best practice is always to properly insert content into LayOut and not use Copy and Paste.

3

Thank you for your reply. My current version of su 2020 is 20.2.172

4

that was the last version of SU/LO 2020. I guess you’d need to update to 2021.

5

You do have a 2021 license that you haven’t yet used. Either do install the 2020.1.1 that I linked to, or update to 2021.1.2.

I just told the license system to email your 2021 license to you. If you don’t have any reason to be staying in 2020, you can install 2021 from this link:

https://bit.ly/suwin21

You don’t need to uninstall 2020, if you want to keep it around for the moment while you confirm that 2021 fixes the issue.

6

Awesome! Thank you so much Colin.