I recently updated Sketchup to 2023. I know it is October, and I’m late to the game, but there are reasons for this.
One of the things that I think we all love about SketchUp is how easy and intuitive it is to use. You can get in a flow state and draw for hours without distraction.
Unfortunately, 2023 is breaking my flow state by all kinds of small, little weird things that didn’t exist in 2022.
I hope these things can get ironed out for 2024
Adding/editing scene names
My typical workflow to add a new scene was to right-click in the top bar where I wanted the new scene to be and then right-click Rename. Type the name and hit enter to close out.
Now, when hitting enter, it doesn’t close out. It adds a return like a word processor.
Also, if I spell something wrong, like add an extra letttter. When I right-click to rename, I can no longer click in the box right on the letter to correct the misspelling. I have to arrow over. Arrow over doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is not intuitive. Pretty much any place in the digital world, you can use your mouse and directly select between letters, but not here. So, you have to go against what is the normal workflow across the digital world to edit your scene name.
Adding Tags
in 2022 with the tag tool active, I used to be able to add a tag, name it, hit enter to close on the text box, and immediately go tag the things I wanted with the tag because once you named the new tag, it stayed highlighted. Now, when adding and naming a new tag and you hit enter, for some reason, several tags are highlighted at once, and you can tag anything unless you go back and reselect the tag name you want to use.
Copy and paste from another file.
I used to be able to have two SketchUp files open at the same time. Copy a component from one SketchUp file and paste it directly into another file. Now that function is gone.
This is especially problematic when you want to download something from the 3D warehouse. in a separate SketchUp file so you can clean up all the unwanted tags and stuff you don’t want in your main file. I think this is best practice, but once the file from the 3d warehouse is cleaned up, you have to go through a cumbersome workflow to get that thing into your working model.
3D warehouse
The 3D warehouse is like the Wild West of terrible models, I often have to try multiple downloads to find a model that will work for my needs. With the new update, after downloading a model and deciding that one is not for me, I want to try a different model. When opening back up the 3D warehouse, it remembers the last model I downloaded and takes me to that page. When I click the back arrow button, it does not do anything. It would be great if it would take me back to the page that had the search query on it so I could immediately try another model to down load.
Workflow.
I know these things seem like small requests, but for weird Autistic, ADHD Creatives, these are derailers, break the flow state, and create an inefficient/frustrating workflow. I tagged this post as a feature request, hoping we can prioritize the small idiosyncrasies of people’s workflow as something to test when developing future versions.
Humans are creatures of habits, and when something we could do before no longer works, it makes for a rough go until we develop new habits around the missing or new features.