Yes, I DO realise the online service is Beta. This is exactly why I am posting, so that maybe someone somewhere might consider improvements.
The measurement units are set to feet and inches by default and there doesn’t seem to be a way to change this. I’m sure it’s fairly easy to detect which country I’m logging in from (i.e. from somewhere on the planet outside of USA) and set the dimensions to metric accordingly? If not, the preference should still be linked to my account so that once I have made the change (see point below), Sketch Up will remember it for when I open it next.
Changing the measurement units was a complete headache. It should be intuitive, but I had to google it to find out. It turns out you have to go into the menu and begin a model in a metric template. Why isn’t there something clickable near the ‘measurements’ box where you enter in dimensions? This should be more intuitive. However if you address point 1 above, maybe this isn’t required.
So, … the beta period began around October of 2015 and at that time it was tentatively called “my.sketchup.com” (in addition to an internal project number label,) … and then …
SketchUp for Web Free offically launched in November 2017, …
and the commercial Shop edition this past April 10th 2018 (ie, the announcement quoted above.)
They are always interested in the desires of the users.
An example is that the “power users” wished for the ability to edit styles and materials, and use an Outliner object tree like they can in the desktop editions. So they’ve added this to the Shop edition …
Yes, all default settings come from the template used to create the “new” model. This also includes the style used.
This is a very good idea! I like it, because it makes sense, and the solution is elegantly simple.
Saving user preferences and settings in local and cloud storage has been discussed and team members have it in their minds. Ie, it is “on their radar”.
So, setting the default template, and even better using custom templates is yet to be implemented.
As Box showed the Units panel is on the Model Info inspector.
The main problem is that newbs don’t think the the word “Info” is equivalent with “Settings” or “Properties” (both words that have been suggested in the past to use to retitle the Model Info inspector.,) … so users new to SketchUp cannot easily (or intuitively) find the Units panel.
This causes many unnecessary forum threads asking how to change the model units, and us spending valuable time explaining where it’s “hiding”.
An excellent idea ! Both for the desktop and web editions.
Ie, a little gear icon button that displays the proper sub panel of the Model Info inspector.
