Sketchup for iPad as viewer

I thought the older Sketchup Viewer for iPad was pretty good because I could have clients install it on their iPad and they could then look through the model(s) I provided for them.

The new SU for iPad is, obviously, far more capable and those of us using Sketchup for our livelihoods will no doubt make good use of it. But, it seem a little “dangerous” in the hands of the client for them to have the ability to accidentally muck up the files I’ve sent to them. It would be great if one could turn off certain capabilities, either in the iPad version or the model file itself, to only provide the ability for the client to, say, select Scenes, turn tag visibility on / off, and make measurements.

Is there a way to accomplish this?

Thanks!

How can you stop them from doing whatever they want? They have access to Sketchup Web anyway.

As soon as you give any client access to your sketchup file for viewing purposes, via Trimble Connect or any other means, they will always be able to edit that file.

The only way I see this happen as it should would be to have a specific file format variant for a sketchup model that could only be used for viewing/reference purposes and would be locked from edition in Sketchup.

You could open it or insert it as a component in a model but you couldn’t edit the model or the component inside a model.

You shouldn’t also be able to convert it into a different format, of course.

It’s less the idea of stopping them from doing whatever they want and more like stopping them from inadvertently doing something that changes the file. The Viewer used to be one such option.

The point doesn’t seem to be the intention of someone else nor yours. It’s more about the possibility of locking a file because we need it.

Hey Bob, we’ve designed the integration between SketchUp for iPad and Trimble Connect to support the scenario you’re describing here.

From within SketchUp for iPad, you can create a project space and/or folders within that project and then publish your model to Connect.
In Trimble Connect’s web app, you can then invite project team members and assign their access controls to the project data (at the project, folder, or file level) – where View Only is an option.

If your client is also using SketchUp for iPad, they will then see that they have access to the project data that you’ve shared with them. When they go to open a file that they have read-only access to, SketchUp will present them with the limited capabilities of the Viewer interface (see below) They will not be able to modify the file or save changes. The app will also prevent them from being able to download a copy of the file, or rename it, or delete it…

With all that said, there are still some risks, in that SketchUp for Web, and SketchUp desktop apps do not enforce re-only permissions in the same way. Web and Desktop will also prevent people from being able to save changes to file in Connect that they have read-only access to, but those apps will not prevent others from being able to make a copy of the file that they have read-only access to, and then make changes to that copy.

In addition to the above, we’re also working to enable an all-around simpler way for designers to share models with their clients. It’s early days, but to get a sense of where we’re headed, you can read more about our first pass at Link sharing (via SketchUp for Web) here: New Labs feature: Link-sharing in SketchUp for Web

I hope that’s helpful…

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Hi, Mike

Thanks for taking the time to put this together. I’ve got to get back to reading up on using Trimble Connect.

Since the model was created in the desktop Sketchup app, I would be uploading it from there, I think. So far, “Publish Model” doesn’t seem to be doing anything… so reading up on TC.

Bob