I’m sure this has been brought up before but I couldn’t find a thread that directly addressed what I’m facing.
This is an issue that I have been dealing with for many months. I have a small team (two going on three) that uses SketchUp for millwork shop drawings and we are having a lot of trouble building and maintaining consistent modeling standards. A big reason for that is because we can’t use the company shared Drive as a syncing hub for our projects and libraries.
I understand that there is a risk of using skp files in synced folders. I don’t understand why that risk can’t be mitigated by making separate backups and frequently saving new versions. But the main thing that I don’t understand is this:
I have Google drive set up so that it mirrors files to a folder on my hard drive. All of our companies shared drive files are on my local hard drive, rather than being streamed.
I utilized a set up like this and worked entirely on shared folders for over a year and was wondering why I had constant bug splats and why it seemed like skp files took forever to open. I eventually gave in and moved to local skp files and was blown away by how much faster it was. Then, today, I did more research on the topic and performed an experiment. I made a copy of a 3700kb purged and reasonably clean skp file on my windows desktop, disconnected my internet, and then navigated to the sync folder that contains the same file. I used my stopwatch app and opened the desktop file - 8.9 seconds to fully open and load all extensions. I then closed SketchUp 2024 and did the same with the sync file. 33 seconds. Again, no internet connection.
Why is it slow? Has anyone faced the problem I’m facing and figured out a solution? Is this just a limitation of Google Drive?
I won’t address the Google Drive question but I wonder why you don’t use Trimble Connect for cloud storage. Save your files to the internal drive and save to Trimble Connect. You can create projects and include members of your team so they can access the files, too. Every time the file is saved to Trimble Connect it’s an incremental save so you can go back to an earlier version of the file if needed.
Does trimble connect allow you to share other assets? Components, styles, scrapbooks, templates, etc?
The idea is that I can set up everyone’s computers to refer to the same directories that contain the most up-to-date standards and prevent this need to tediously update each team member’s local library whenever there’s an update to a standard.
You could share components and templates but not styles or scrapbooks.
Linking all those things to Google Drive is risky as you mentioned but if it works and you can put up with the access delays,it sounds like you have a solution.
It’s not really a solution yet because I haven’t solved the performance issues. I don’t understand why it would be (4x) slower to access a file that is stored on your hard drive merely because it is in a sync folder.
I use Google Drive all the time and we’ve never had an issue with it. No loss of files or corrupted data… ever. Going on 8+ years using it at work. Always backed up and up to date. Now we are a LARGE “company” and maybe we have a different plan?
It depends on the speed of your drive storage, if the file is saved in a hard drive, it will take longer to open than a file saved in a solid disc like an M.2. Or a 2.5” SSD.
I use Google drive to share files on projects but use Trimble connect for Sketchup files. Im not crazy about how Connect works but you can easily upload and download .SKP files. You can also send links so the user can look at a read only file using the online Sketchup version. For speed I download files for editing, internet speed is an issue for me.
I chatgpted this for a while and, apparently, google drive adds a ton of file access overhead even for mirrored files in offline access mode. Whether the internet is disconnected or not, it consistently takes at least 25 seconds longer to open sketchup files in the shared directories. It also causes material and style panes to lag a bunch during models whenever they’re open. There appear to be no settings, neither at the organization level nor at the user level in Drive for Desktop settings to mitigate this. Nothing along the lines of a sync frequency, nothing. Just gonna be the biggest market share cloud storage solution and not have this figured out. I’m bummed.
And I’m only basing mine off years of experience as well. Every job I’ve worked for ALL project files are to be worked off of the server share/google drive. It’s never been an issue. I swear the vast majority of these are self-inflicted.
I mean it’s just a business google shared drive and my laptop. I have one SSD drive. The file that opens in 8 seconds is in a folder on that drive. The file that opens in 32 seconds is on a folder on that same SSD drive that is synced to Google Drive, in mirrored mode, with offline access turned on. Same 32 seconds whether I’m connected to the internet or not.
If I close google drive for windows, the sync folder empties. I do not understand why there isn’t a simple way to download my entire business google drive onto my hard drive and have it periodically sync without breaking sketchup.
I appreciate the advice here, Dave, but I just downloaded trimble connect, played with it some, and went through the documentation, and… just no. There must be a simpler way to achieve what I’m going for than to open this can of hot sweaty garbage just to use its cloud feature.
I want to have (up-to-date) project files readily available in a directory structure of my choice. With a back up policy that ensures that I only lose a days work or so in the rare event of a corrupted skp file.
I just tried a SU file on my work Google Drive at the house. It is a 2 mb model and it opened in less than 2 secs. I have no idea whats going on but I wish I did. Now my Google Drive has been set up by a large “company” and maybe that is the difference. My download speed here at home is 529 Mbps and I know that work has a download and upload around 8xx-9xx give or take with traffic. Maybe this??
