Thank you @DanRathbun for all your input. I’ve tried to answer/address some of your questions and recommendations. My apologies in advance for yet another lengthy post…
If I’m reading the specs correctly, the hard drive in this laptop is solid state. Do you mean a solid state hard drive would be better, or that I should literally add another (if possible)?
I checked it out and the web version of SU is not displaying this washed out/under saturated problem. Would that be an indication that it is not a graphics card issue in [some of] the desktop versions?
I did not set these…I never have - I didn’t know any about these settings two days ago… That said, I checked to see what what the Capabilities were on G-SU8 and T-SU2014 on my other laptop:
G-SU8 is:
#: 265/ Colors: 128 bit Co/ Precision: High /Shadows: Yes / Anti-Alias: 0x
T-SU2014 is:
#: 265/ Colors: 128 bit Co/ Precision: High /Shadows: Yes / Anti-Alias: 4x
NOTE: That laptop did not have an actual graphics card, and I’m assuming it does have hardware acceleration. Processor is AMD A12-9700P Radeon R7, 10 Compute Cores 4C+6G, 2.50 GHz, 12.0GB RAM
This evening, I uninstalled SU8 and 2014 from the new laptop, then reinstalled them, and also installed SU 2017 as you suggested. I installed 2017 first, then 2014 and 8, in that order.
T-SU Make 2017:
There is nothing listed under CAPABILITIES
NOTE: Background & sky and materials & textures are not washed out
T-SU Make 2014:
There is no 32bit colour choice, and no 128bit colour choice like on the other laptop.
Available:
20 / True Color / Medium / Yes / 0X
36 / True Color / Medium / Yes / 2x
52 / True Color / Medium / Yes / 4x
94 / 64bit color/ Medium / Yes / 0x
Background & sky and materials & textures still washed out
G-SU 8:
There is no 32bit colour choice, and no 128bit colour choice like on the other laptop.
Available: Same as T-SU 2014
Background & sky and materials & textures still washed out
Last night, with the help of posts I found by @Anssi, and after updating the graphics drivers, I found my way into the NVIDIA Experience control panel and did away with auto-selected defaults:
Manage 3D Settings >> Global Settings >> Preferred Graphics Processor: (changed to) High-performance NVIDIA processor
Manage 3D Settings >> Global Settings >> Settings >> OpenGL rendering GPU: (changed to) GeForce GTX 1650 Ti
Manage 3D Settings >> Program Settings >> Select a program to customize: Trimble SketchUp (Trimble SketchUp)
Manage 3D Settings >> Program Settings >> Select the preferred graphics processor for this program: (changed to) High-performance NVIDIA processor
Manage 3D Settings >> Program Settings >> Specify the settings for this program >> OpenGL rendering GPU: (changed to) GeForce GTX 1650 Ti
Now…since doing that, the only thing I can do in any of the three desk top applications with my space mouse is to zoom in and out. This is the same that happened when I removed the checkmark yesterday from Use hardware acceleration (prior to making the changes in the NVIDIA control panel). I regained full space mouse capability after putting the checkmark back in.