SketchUp Viewer version 5.5 released!

So you managed to reproduce the issue too? Nice :slight_smile:

I’m playing around with the model you shared Colin, and I have a theory about what’s happening.
The file you shared uses a SketchUp material that includes a JPG image texture. JPGs are inherently 100% opaque, but SketchUp offers an opacity override that allows us to render the materials partially translucent. That override gets lost when viewing in AR. We’ll take a look at this.

In the meantime, I tinkered a bit and found that if I take the JPG source file of the texture, open it in Photoshop, make it so that the image itself is inherently translucent, save it as a PNG (a format that retains the inherent translucency), replace the JPG with that PNG and then view that in AR, the material is then translucent in AR.

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Thanks, I’ll switch those to PNGs.

Hello team, i am an uncommon user of sketchup in the construction field and its been a high pleasure for me to make a bridge between construction worker, enginer and drawing tech. Badly for me, 3 days ago my world collapse. There is different field of application and the new platform as throw away the simplicity that made the success of 10 years of sketch up improvement for common people.

Thanks to respond, the older version was a diamond for us. Specialy when it was time to take dimension.

As there are more tools now, you need to bring up a menu to see the extra tools. If you don’t see the tool you need, tape measure or AR for example, touch the bottom left icon (which initially will be the arrow icon). Then you should see the extra tools, including the tape measure.

Top left icon on iPad.

Its not a matter of extra tool, you need to think outside of the box to see a market perfectly made for the older version. The 5.4 version was already perfect for the construction field. Sometimes more is like less

The 5.4 version was an unexploited diamond. Maybe you Just dont imagine the potential of simplicity for the majority of us. I worked everyday for the democratisation of graphic knowledge, i am a little bit disappointed right now. How can i buy that version or Just keep it in the same state of mind and maybe more efficient with less fonction.

There is a huge market for simplicity.
A Huge market that is about to fade with this version. Most of us just dont start the update, the other, try to step forward

If there is a phone for comments, let me Know

Thanks

By the way, this 5.5 version have strong capabilities for other field, i dont say its a mess.

It just loose simplicity for the worker

The previous version it cab move section cut plane along the model, so in version 5.5.1 I can’t find this function anymore ?

This upgrade has done wonders for file browsing, which had been severely broken for ages, so thank you!

Unfortunately, now that AR has lost precise positioning, it’s become fundamentally useless as a tool. When I test my model at 1:1 scale in AR (garden sheds), there’s no way to get them to sit at ground level, only 2 meters in the air. Not very useful for evaluating the way they look in reality!

Please bring back precise positioning to the AR viewer. Having paid for the ability to view AR, having that functionality simply disappear (without a replacement solution) isn’t really acceptable.

A single finger touch should place the model on the ground. You can use the show grid option to be sure whether the ground is at ground level. If it isn’t, try the reset tracking button.

Thanks Colin, but that doesn’t work for me. Every time the model is placed it does it at a tiny scale (and not straight), and when I set to 1:1 it jumps off the ground, even though the ground is recognized (see image). As its also impossible to manipulate the model (it self centers on every touch), it’s also not possible to view the different variations in the same environment (as it was with manual movement).

@drewdraws2 Apologies for the trouble that this update is causing you.

My suspicion is that the model of the greenhouses that you’re trying to view is sitting some distance above SketchUp’s ground plane. Since the AR feature is attempting to align SketchUp’s ground plane with the real world’s ground plane, you’ll want to move the greenhouses down in the SketchUp file, so that they are positioned on SketchUp’s ground plane.

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Hi @MikeTadros,

Thanks for the info. The sheds are sitting on the ground (0mm in blue axis, see attached), so I don’t think that’s the problem. Since I have to manipulate the model to get it to sit in the orientation I want, that could be where the issues are arising, but it seems to “sit” on the floor even after rotating when placed (at tiny scale) but jumps off the ground when switched to 1:1.

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Please explain what it means to sign up monthly??
This is harassment !!!
Think about it if you had to sign in to all of your existing apps every month!
Joke

Hi @usernam. Thank you for your feedback. I hope you can appreciate that many of our users rely on our products to help them with the work that they do for sensitive clients, on sensitive projects. As such, it’s imperative that we help them to keep their work secure, which is why our app automatically signs users out after they’ve been inactive for a month, and requires that they sign back in. I’m sorry o hear that you find that requirement frustrating, but user data and security are things that we take seriously, and this is not something we are going to change.

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Dear Mike!
I really appreciate your work, you can be sure of that. My dissatisfaction is about unnecessary login.
Please think about this carefully. Imagine that all your existing software and applications are constantly being logged in and out. Just imagine this situation. Calendar, note, to-do app and all as many as you have. You would just go crazy, you would be very angry. When you need to quickly pick up the calendar at the doc because an appointment has been made and then you would tell him to wait. Join the organization and more … I feel the same when I present and Sketchup doesn’t work …
Also keep in mind that applications that are significantly more important than Sketchup are less than half a year away.
A cloud in which I store my most valuable things, company documents, startup developments.
Your security departments need a major overhaul. If this thing was about something other than security, there is another solution.
Good job!
Please discuss this at a large meeting.

Edit:
General security is provided by the operating system anyway. That’s why I use my apple device. Thus, the reference to safety is unjustified. I think so.

I was in the Beta for months, only needed to sign in at the beginning and never had to sign in after that, even after updates of the App.

In an older version of Sketchup Viewer for iOS (iPad) the user was able to quickly select tools from the Navigation Toolbar. One of the most useful for me was to spin the camera’s view around a single point, this “spin in place” function I think was called “Look Around”.

The newest version updated on my iPad in May 2022 does not seem to present the older “Navigation Toolbar” in any obvious place that I have been able to discover. This is unfortunate, because in my opinion a “Viewer App” should be primarily focused on camera viewing UI functions, which this new version of Sketchup Viewer does not, for me, seem to handle as well as the older version. The online help page for Sketchup Viewer mobile also refers to the usefulness of the “Navigation Toolbar”. Is this online help from Trimble not accurate anymore ?

I hope the Navigation Toolbar is just still available in SU-viewer and I just have not found it yet.

Thank-you