Scene organization - Scene Folders?!?

SketchUp Feature Requests
1

This has been an ongoing request since at least 2015, the year I began using SketchUp. Rather than adding to the nine-year thread I just re-read, I will begin again and hope it’s noticed.

In our design-fabrication shop (we do film, museums, zoos and aquariums, conventions, pop-ups…), in addition to 2d drawings, we often send the model out to the floor. A complicated build might include:

1 - Standard views, PSPs, details and sections for layout/paper space

2 - Views of the metal work for metal

3 - Views of the wood/plastics etc fab for that shop

4 - X-ray views and/or exploded views for fab visualization

5 - Sequential views for fab or install sequence

6 - Views of color scheme for scenics

7 - Views to render or display in a stylized way for the client and for general visualization

8 - Parts layouts to go to the CAM for the router or fiber laser

9 - Views in early concept stages as a design develops

10 - Assorted additional details in many styles for many purposes

11 - All kinds of things I can’t think of right now

What this means is we can end up with a model with fifty-plus necessary scenes for me, our other designers, estimators, PM’s and the shop leads to pick through when working from the model. It would be balky enough if you could actually see the titles of those fifty-plus scenes, but dealing with “FO - Fro…” is just silly.

I love working in SketchUp, and we push and pull and stretch on it in so many ways to get from here to there in our shop. But the inability to simply create folders to manage scenes is a gigantic inelegant letdown.

In that long thread I mentioned above, someone referred to this as one of the most frequently mentioned feature requests. I don’t know if that’s true, but, well, come on… If for some reason Scene Folders are technologically unachievable, at least LET US KNOW, so we can stop hoping for this basic and intuitive improvement.

2

Don’t disagree, but while we wait another 10 years you might try

3

Yes bmike, I tried it a few years ago and, if I remember right, found it hard to use. Also, it didn’t display folders across the scene bar, which is what makes the model good for others to engage. And also, dear SketchUp, shouldn’t this just be part of the interface?

But, you know what? I’d be a fool to not give it another shot. Stay tuned.

4

Confirmed - hard to use, doesn’t allow naming of folders to suit needs, not on scene bar.

Folders in the scene bar would be so simple to use…

5

Agreed — been asking for a long time. To be more specific, I’d like the scene bar to display the individual scenes of a given (selected) scene folder with up and down arrows that, with a single click take you up or down the list of scene folders, and with click and hold (or cntl click) a pop-down menu list of scene folders to go straight to a desired folder. I wouldn’t want the scene bar to be a list of folders requiring you to use two clicks for every single change of scenes.

6

I realise there’s no perfect way to keep everyone happy as to how scenes are displayed. I do like the Search icon and dropdown list. It’s an extra click or two, though.

Chrome browser tabs seem to work in a fairly intuitive manner.
The technique of Grouping them together then an icon click to expand the group is a useful one

Tab Icons or Colours would be good to make it quicker to search for (especially when trunkated). this is how browser tabs remain useable even with 50+ open.

Maybe a Forward/back button would be a quick shortcut that can be useful to some?

..
There’s another thing that would help a lot - less padding/space around interface elements. We could gain 30% more “stuff” on the screen quite easily with better icon/menu efficiency.

One more idea comes to mind that is found in other software - Cameras. These are simple views, rather than complex (styled) Scenes..but they can be both, I suppose.
I don’t know if there are good Camera management extensions for SketchUp already but worth a look?

7

Most of my models end up with over 100 scenes, so relying on tabs is a nightmare because once they fill the screen, scrolling left and right is a pain. So, I use the Scenes tray instead, which I find pretty efficient with one adjustment to the way I create scenes.

After completing a model I need around 25 scenes for overviews, elevations and section details, then 30 or so for the glass, around 40 for the metalwork, and maybe 10 for set-out drawings. When I start a new group of scenes, I don’t create them at the bottom of the tray, I create the first scene of a new group at the top of the tray, with subsequent scenes appearing directly underneath. So, when I start my metalwork scenes, I place the first one at the top of the tray then continue adding below it which keeps related scenes together and easy to find.

The other benefit of doing that is new scenes appear at the start of the the tab bar so I can get to them from either the tabs or the tray and if I need to jump back to earlier scenes, using the tray is much quicker.

Hopefully that makes sense.