Layout 2022 Not Translating Scenes from 2021

Screenshot 2022-03-08 065826

We updated to Sketchup 2022 and Layout has random issues reading about 20% of the scenes. When we go to Sketchup and click on that scene, the screen is blank. We have to zoom out, then back in, at which point it suddenly sees it. The problem is that upon zooming in/out, the position is lost, and the layout annotations no longer are in the right positions.

Has anyone else experienced this? Thank you.

Are you zooming in and out in the viewport in Layout?

We are not zooming in and out through layout. We lock the layer that the scene is created in, so it cannot do that.

If we try and select the view in layout (after it is unlocked) the cursor will not even pick it up. You have to window/select using a drag window technique.

The only time I have seen this before, is when layout loses its reference for a skp file, and is basically reading a temporary file in the system cache.

From what I can see, the new version of sketchup has lost the view. Similar to when you are zoomed in on a model, and it disappears, at which point you ahve to do a zoom extents and it re-appears. The same thing is now happening here.

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Here is are 2 clips showing what is happening:

clip 1: Layout scenes go haywire when I update model in Layout
clip 2: Sketchup has blanked the detail from view (white screen) until I orbit, at which point it re-appears. I tried the Zoom-Previous to go back, and when I do that, it is again, a white screen.

It would help if you share the LO file.

shared layout file.layout (13.1 MB)
Here it is.

Got it and taking a look. First have to report I blew coffee out my nose when I saw the layers list. :smiley:

LOL. Yeah, I have that happen a lot too.

So in this case LayOut IS updating the viewport to correctly render the scene as it shows in SketchUp. Due to the way you have the camera set upit’s actually “focused” behind the model so your scene in SU shows white. Here I’ve added a line between the camera at the far left and the “focus” point.

I switched the camera to Perspective and then back to Parallel Projection. Then I adjusted the view to show the part of the model you were showing in LO, updated the scene, saved the changes, and updated the model reference in LO.

Here’s the file as I’ve revised it. I only worked on theSection L viewport and associated scene. Auto Render is turned off to prevent other viewports from rendering and appearing to vaporize. I didn’t check the other scenes in the SketchUp model, either. immediately after you open this LayOut file go to Document Setup>References. Select the .skp file and choose Unlink. Then right click on that Section L viewport and choose Open with SketchUp to open the embedded file.
shared layout file.layout (5.2 MB)

By the way, I rendered that viewport as Vector and I also purged unused stuff from the LayOut file.

Hi Dave. Thanks for looking at this. Just so I am understanding how Sketchup Help works, are you employed by Sketchup or are you a guy like me on this forum?

The problem I am having is that this glitch is version related. This means that of the thousands of projects we have done in sketchup 2021, none of them now read correctly because sketchup 2022 has changed the point of camera focus.

The process of 1) switch to perspective, then back to parallel (2) then 3) go to document setup/references 4) select skp file 5) unlink 6) right click and choose embedded file… it is too much. It is basically re-doing the detail. We have around 120 of these details per job. In short, we cannot practically do that.

“Then I adjusted the view to show the part of the model you were showing in LO, updated the scene” …this messes up the layout annotations, leaders and line work so it is now misaligned. We have to literally re-assign, and re-attach them all.

We are considering just booting 2022 sketchup and going back to 2021 until they patch this. I’m frustrated to say the least, which is why I hope you don’t take this personal if you work for SU.

I am a long time user of SketchUp and LayOut. Almost 20 years of SketchUp and LayOut since the first version. I am not a Trimble employee. I just volunteer my time to try to help other users.

I opened dozens of my own old LayOut files in LayOut 2022 and haven’t had any problems with camera positions.

I guess I haven’t more to add.

Well first off, thank you for helping me. I am thankful for anyone who responds, and double thankful for people who volunteer to respond.

2nd, there must be something in the way I am modeling that is different than what you are doing, which is how my models are not reading right, which is why we are getting 180 degree results in SU 2022.

I found this guy on Youtube, who creates section planes using the “position camera” toolbar.
This part where he does this is at 5:01.

Up until now, we have been creating actual section cuts with view oriented perpendicular to the plane, to get our interior elevations. We set a screen behind the cut, to hide other things we dont’ want to show up.

I tried the trick shown in the Youtube video, and my wall is gone…until I slightly orbit my view, at which point it appears…this is the same camera focus issue you mention above.


That method took advantage of a long-standing bug related to clipping planes. The bug was fixed in the first release of SketchUp 2022 however it had the effect of making this Position Camera thing unusable. A few weeks ago an there was a maintenance release that addresses that.

I’ve never used that method for scenes in SketchUp because I prefer to use section cuts when needed.

I am having the exact same issue. This has been a huge headache for us and I am wondering if you have just saved down to 2021 to fix the issue which I have resulted to for my projects. Now the problem is I have projects in both versions which is doubly frustrating but changing our workflow around to not use section cuts for scenes is impractical and would mean rebuilding all of our plans.

Any resolution to this from anywhere??

Also - thanks to the ever present bowler hat gopher DaveR for chiming in on this and all SKP issues.

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I had helped a few people with this problem, then finally got around to writing a topic about the issue, and the work around that has helped people in that particular situation. If you read the topic and find it overwhelming, put one of your SketchUp files that shows the problem somewhere that I can download it and try to apply the work around for you.

Here is what I wrote:

Hi Colin,

The issue I am having now (and have been having) is I have purchased two seats on my license, both assigned to different email addresses. When I open SKP 2022 in one I can’t seem to open 2021 on the other license, in fact I keep getting booted from both when I try to sign in using my other email login. I understand the workaround and will try that in 2022, but it does not seem like Sketchup is registering that I have two license. I’ll let you know if the workaround works.

Nope, scenes still blank.

Here is the dropbox link.

The worst part is I can’t even use 2021 because I can’t sign in. I try and sign out of 2022 and then into my 2021 app and it’s still not working. It says I have too many computers using the software but I only have operating on one.


The attached is what I get

“You are using SketchUp Pro on too many machines. Please sign-out from another machine, or manage your activations below.”

And I can’t sign in - I have 12 projects I can’t work on because of this issue.

Which of the scenes in that file are the ones that look wrong?

I realized I was using a version of SketchUp that already has the problem fixed, and didn’t have any scenes with problems. So I opened the file in the version you have, and could see lots of blank scenes. Here is the file after I have run the work around script:

https://we.tl/t-lhAdF4eVoX

Can you send a message to me to say what email addresses you use on the subscriptions?

You should be able to sign in on 2021 and 2022 on one machine with one of the emails, and 2021 and 2022 on another machine with the other email.

If either machine still has 2019 or 2020, those would count against the total as well, so make sure you are signed out from those versions, if you still have them.