Thanks for your suggestions!
I had a minor breakthrough / added confusion:
Previously I was using the 4mb skp file on my desktop as the control and comparing it to the same file in the business shared drive.
Desktop file - 8-9 seconds consistently
Shared Drive file - 31-33 seconds consistently
I added a third option: the same file in “My Drive” rather than the shared drive.
My Drive file - 18-19 seconds
?
edit: found this in google’s help pages
I guess I’m done with google drive.
Late to the party.
Like Sean – I’ve been using Google Workspace (business starter) for a fair while and use it to backup and sync my local projects folder on an SSD and have never had any problems.
A 10Mb SketchUp model in the synced folder took around 5 seconds to open and the same file copied to a non synced folder took the same time to open.
Apologies if I’ve missed some crucial information in the thread…
If you have a couple minutes would you be able to share screenshots of your Google drive settings? It really seems like I’m missing something simple.
Thank you. Are you using drive for desktop? Is it a business shared drive or an individual account? Are you streaming or mirroring the files?
I’m using drive for business and the desktop app.
Yep – Drive for Desktop.
I have a Business Starter Workspace account which no one else access.
My understanding is that I am mirroring and not streaming.
I could be wrong but I think what you’re doing is originating the files on your hard drive and backing them up to google. That works fine for you because you’re the only one using the files.
That’s slightly different than what I’m trying to do. I need to share a common directory with my team where the files don’t have to be manually copied to our hard drive in order to be able to work on them.
Another update:
I repeated the same test with opening a 30mb DWG file using AutoCAD LT and a 300mb PDF with markups using Bluebeam Revu
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AutoCAD: 10 seconds local, same 10 seconds from shared folder
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Bluebeam: 5 seconds and 5 seconds. Let’s just reflect for a minute on how awesome Bluebeam is. 300mb file!
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and just for reference, we’re comparing to a 4mb SKP file that takes 9 seconds on local folder and 32 seconds on shared folder.
So the problem appears to be in my sketchup configuration, or intrinsic to sketchup 2024. My next move will be to compare opening layout files, and then maybe install SketchUp 2025 and see if it does better. Then possibly reinstalling sketchup 2024.
edit: LayOut test on 10mb file: 8 seconds vs 22 seconds.
edit again:
Sketchup 2025 on the same 4mb file
4 seconds local
28 seconds shared
The interesting thing about this test is that I’ve now ruled out extensions. I suspect that’s how I saved 4 seconds from the baseline as well as the same 4 seconds from the shared version (32 to 28).
Can anyone on the Sketchup Team guess as to what’s causing this?
I’m actually sending the files to my Google drive and accessing them from that drive folder. No copy on my local ssd.
I’m not sure what you mean.
I’m trying to view and edit files in cloud folders via my windows file explorer. My use case seems to be the inverse of Paul’s. If it’s different from yours also then I think it’s a bug with Sketchup 2024 and 2025. I’ve spent the last 8 hours trying to figure this thing out.
I feel like I’m asking for some pretty basic functionality here (every other AEC software that I’m using works perfectly with Drive for Desktop). If I’m hemmed into having to use Trimble Connect then that’s a pretty huge bummer.
Hi Renton. I have been using google drive with sketchup for about twelve years. I don’t even use the mirror files option and I don’t have any issues. Im on Mac tho.
That’s good to know. Thanks
In other news, my team member has the same massive lag when opening skp files on shared google drive folder. It took his computer about 1 1/2 minutes to open a 10mb file. He has the exact same computer as me, though.
Even if it’s not considered good practice to save skp models on a synced drive, there are many reasons why you’d want to be able to open them in a read-only way.
I’m about to start work on a project, using google drive. I tried using it a while ago, and had some issues with permissions and read only access, so I switched to dropbox, and I’ve had no mayor issues. I have noticed though, that db has more limitations now, than before, as far as number of concurrent users and similar things, to try and upsell you to a $$$ plan. Read the fine print. Probably the same with google drive??
Can you try another cloud provider?
I’d be interested to know what other cloud providers teams have used.
I too, need a central location on the cloud to share with my team all of the project related files, templates, and standards.
We have been using Drive and Drive for Desktop for about 3 years despite the SU folks not advising it. We work directly from files stored on drive (don’t copy them to our personal drive first) I have been nervous about a major file corruption while doing this.
The frustrations with Drive for us have been:
- Not having any notification if someone else has the file open/in use (Read Only notification)
- Fear of the SU or LO file being open by more than one team member at the same time and then if someone saves, it will overwrite the others recent work.
- An often very long lag (sometimes 15-20 minutes) with files updating/syncing on Drive for Desktop after a save and close.
I’m not thrilled with with Trimble Connect because we want to store and share all of project related files (pdf, excel, etc…not just SU and LO files) in the share cloud file structure.
I am curious about Dropbox.
Any other cloud setups that y’all are using?
If you haven’t had any problems, it doesn’t mean you won’t have one in the future. If you are saving a file and by any reason the internet connection is lost, even for a second, you could have your file corrupted.
By saving the files on the local drive you can solve the issue of getting overwritten files cause every team member will have a copy of the last modification they did to the file.
There aren’t any safe options other than having the files stored in the internal drive, the cloud services should be used as a backup because there have been cases that even files stored in the local drive have been corrupted.
@francisquitof Yeah, I understand that. It’s just such a drag to copy files back and forth to the cloud and for each team member to constantly relink the SU references in our Layout files every time. Not to mention, the communication challenges of figuring out who, on the team, has the latest and greatest version of the files throughout the process. ugh.
I think I understand that it’s ok to work directly from Trimble Connect from the cloud, so what can’t it be so for Google Drive?
It’s preposterous that this problem isn’t easy to solve. Every other tech field does version control.