Mac interface; toolbar customizing and docking tools,

SketchUp Feature Requests
21

I think I would like to put my ten cents in on this. I have used SketchUp Pro since version 5. I have used it on both Windows and Mac. Windows always used to crash when my models got to be too big and Mac has been super stable for me and a workhorse. I also have to use AutoCAD products in my day to day work. If you can look at the latest versions of AutoCAD they have pallettes that dock. They can be moved all over the screen and onto multiple creeps. They can be ‘hidden or collapsed and then they expand when your cursor goes over them and they can be locked and unlocked.

Maybe this is something we should be looking at in how to advance the cause and move SketchUp forward.screen space to me is valuable even with a 27” and 24’ SET OF 5K Apple Monitors running off a Mac Pro or my MacBook Pro.

Your thoughts???

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22

I completely agree DRDS. I too us autodesk products (Fusion) and its much cleaner. I haven’t experienced quite the program stability with sketchup lately since moving back to mac - it crashes quite often for a myriad of reasons - usually adjusting textures within a component within a component or something convoluted like that - I’m still figuring out how I can fix this (of course, sketchup help claims its all vray/extensions, but I digress…).

I use the mac pro that pushes out to 3 additional monitors. The memory for all the other programs windows and docking exist when I reboot and open the apps - except for sketchup. So without being a developer, it’s clear it can be reconciled or as a minimum there room for improvement.

This isn’t about moving to the dark side but its not about appeasing the purists and leaving things alone either- its about flexibility to adapt to several workflows while still leveraging Mac’s Strengths…

I’m impressed - great dialog going here…

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23

I couldn’t agree more. Some serious attention to even small improvements here would be huge to the Mac user base.

24

Boy am I banging my head against the Mac materials window this morning. I would give my pinky finger to be able to see materials by name and also to rename a list. Help us Sketchup-Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope.

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25

I often use Material resizer for that purpose

26

Cool. But I’d give my left pinky finger to have this basic functionality built in natively into pro graded software.

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27

I will make you an offer you can’t refuse… :horse:

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28

Thanks Mr. Corleone… Actually I had not thought of that, it does get me the name, but opening it I see all the materials in my model default ordered by size, it’s overwhelming and hard to sort that way when what I want is to see the names of all materials I have saved in a given list, sorted by name. And even though I can see the names, I can’t do anything with them, what I really want is to rename the files and rename lists, which Materials resizer is no help with.

If I search out the list files on my hard drive and change the folder names will it change the names in the material window? Or if I change the actual file names will it break the link to the existing model? I’ll have to experiment with some workarounds when I have more time, under a deadline now.

29

Here is how @medeek handles materials

I agree it should be natively, though

30

Mac materials (both setup and poor performance) and

Mac toolbars and docking

Two separate subjects. Maybe a new thread is needed?

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31

regarding material comment - I have similar frustrations (not sure if others use vray - but the whole interface needs help), but also agree, we almost need a separate topic board to expand on that. Hopefully sketchup developers are taking notes and uptick the priority that the mac interface could use some attention.

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32

I completely agree with this !!! It will be great if SU do something for this on the next version. We need to have the power to configure our own toolbar even with extension tools and have the opportunity too dock it or not :smiley: would be very essential for productivity

33

I have used Windows and Mac , Currently been on Mac for the last 10 years. I love the ease of use and the general look of the Mac UI. But… when it comes to programs that were previously only available to Windows eg: AutoCAD and Sketchup specifically, Mac is not great at all. I work with designers that use PC’s and everytime I have an issue, and have to ask them for help, the way they are able to navigate through each of those programs is so much easier, and embarrassing for a Mac user, alot more intuitive too. Why is there only the option to have the default toolbar or the floating large toolbar ? Just have the large toolbar as the docked toolbar. Or make it customisable. I think Windows sometime offers to many options, but in these two programs, Mac makes it really cryptic to find certain options for functions.

34

Yes! This. I only work with two setups…one with an external monitor and the other directly on my laptop. Every time I switch I have to take several minutes to move my windows out of the way and inadvertently miss one or two that are hiding behind each other…both extension trays and native tool trays (layers, entity info etc.).

It is very frustrating - I would greatly appreciate more control over tray placement and/or the ability to save display profiles so that it would “remember” my window placement.

I absolutely understand that some prefer to use shortcuts and pull tools out one at a time, but many of us prefer to have our tools out and ready for use.

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35

Yes. It is sort a Mac thing. And I must say PowerCADD an old old program does better than this, but the windows do get a bit loose at times. But as I think I note above, other programs have worked around this Mac style.

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At one point, there was a third party utility program that would save out PowerCADD preference files and swap other saved ones in. It was great, but OS upgrades kept breaking it. It did give me a taste for what such a capability can be like.

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37

this just deserves some applause for pop culture reference used in a sentence…and that right skillfully.

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38

Got to say, this and one other thing are my main concerns. Start up with multiple monitors vs. just on my laptop and my whole setup explodes into chaos. Having presets for screen layouts would be great!!

I think it’s worth commenting on similar needs. I don’t seem to have issue with the floating tool panels except in above situations. I keep them open for the most part on a second monitor to keep things uncluttered on the main screen. I use keyboard shortcuts exclusively so don’t need the top bar menus. Can’t encourage everyone enough to go that direction, but that is a digression. What I trip on consistently is the Material/Color panel in Sketchup and Layout floating around like R2D2, with a mind of it’s own. I put it on my second monitor in a specific location and size and tomorrow it will pop in another spot. Just…why? Same goes with the Text box. It never stays open. I want it open all the time in Layout and in the same spot and the same size. Why does it never auto open like all the rest and when it does open it is always in some stray corner that I never put it?

Also in Layout, the new Shape and Dimension Style panels are fixed sizes. No adjustability like every other panel. Why? And then some panels (darn Color panel!!!) are sticky and some are not. Why is that?

I really only want consistency. If Sketchup gives me the ability to move and adjust panels, which I personally enjoy, why does is that ability inconsistent with some panels?

Frustrated enough with it today to finally waste my time long enough to comment…HA! Can I make this billable time somehow?

EDIT

Would like to add that I also do not understand why font and text control is split up. If I highlight a note and need to manipulate text size, font, color, ect., I have to right click to get the font panel to show (because, again, it doesn’t stay open when I close Layout). However, if I want to control alignment and anchoring, the only place I can do that is in the drop down menu at the top of the screen. That is some serious mouse movement and lots of mouse clicks for all of that to happen when it could easily all be in the font panel.

Of course, I think another person posted about right click context menus that appear at the cursor, similar to AutoCAD Inventor and similar. This would be a radical change for the better, but not sure if that is even possible with the code structure of Sketchup.

Oh and can I just say again…SAVED STATES FOR MONITOR SET UPS AS MENTIONED BY RTCOOL ARE THE HIGHEST ON MY LIST. PLEASE, OH PLEASE SKETCHUP CODE WRITING GENIUS’S (AND I MEAN THAT IN THE BEST OF WAYS) MAKE OUR YEAR AND GIVE THAT TO US IN THE NEXT RELEASE???

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39

It‘s definitely the not docking toolbars that makes sketchup so useless on mac. I don’t understand how sketchup could do this!! And it has nothing to do with Apples design requirements! I‘m an architect and other softwares like rhino, archicad, vectorworks even photoshop or indesign that I use, have exactly the same interface as on windows! No annoying toolbars flying around the screen. I don’t think using shortcuts is the best way to change layers, find out entity info, change materials or scenes… I had to downlod windows on my mac only because of sketchup. I hope sketchup is really going to fix that!

5 Likes
40

I am going away from having too many toolbars open on my iMac and opt to source the specific toolbar function through the menu system, even though it slows down workflow.

Ease of use of toolbar icons could be improved if developers could consistently implement :

  • toolbar icons that popup a name descriptor on hovering with the select tool
  • the extension name where the extension has more than one associated icon.
1 Like