The Saga of SketchUp Constantly Changing Drawing Templates

SketchUp Pro
1

Hey SketchUp team,

Just dropping you a line from a Trainer perspective, in terms of the ever-changing default styles of Drawing Templates in new releases of SketchUp Pro.

From a training perspective, when I’m teaching students and professionals how to create accurate, precise and professional floor plans & elevations, I recommend using a crisp, white background. It’s easier to view your geometry; especially as it mimics how the plan will look on a PDF or when printed. It’s also much more professional when presenting to clients or uploading to websites/blogs or social media for marketing purposes.

I never deviate from this recommendation, from a professional standards perspective.

The style settings for the Drawing Template of Interiors in mm (before 2022 version) were perfect. All the edges were uniform, the background was white and because visible faces were automatically oriented to white it provided an efficient setup from the outset, in which to teach good practice and habits when using SketchUp. I didn’t have any issue with the fact that the camera settings weren’t in plan view because it was a good opportunity for me to discuss the importance of camera settings in SketchUp This. Template. Was. Perfect.

This template was previously referred to as Interiors and Production Design (I think) and required me to instruct students to change Style settings to Hidden Line so that the background was white (and all visible faces were white).

Now with the 2022 version, I’m having to redo course content again, to instruct students when choosing Interiors in mm to go to the Style settings and choose Hidden Line because the background in Interiors in mm is grey.

A minor inconvenience probably from your perspective, but from an efficient setup perspective, where you want new users to get up and running quickly, it’s a little frustrating, especially when the goalposts change every other year.

I appreciate that I can advise my students to create their own Drawing Template and I will do that but wouldn’t it be more logical to have a Drawing Template available consistently; that never changes, that has the standard, more professional style settings of a white background and uniform edges from the outset?

I can’t use the Drawing Template of Plan View in mm because the profile edges are thicker than all other geometry. If I’m teaching students and professionals how to use SketchUp to create technical drawings, they need to have uniform edges from the beginning; especially if I’m teaching students who are studying a formal, accredited qualification that includes assessment of technical drawing conventions. If they need to change the line thickness, I show them how to do that separately using LayOut. This also greatly aids my encouragement and influencing of students and Designers to switch to SketchUp for the creation of professional drawings because there is still this stigma that AutoCAD is the only option when creating technical drawings, and that SketchUp isn’t up to the job. Which I passionately disagree with.

I’m asking SketchUp to give more consideration to consistent, professional use as it is SketchUp Pro after all! I’m very interested to engage in more discussion about this if necessary and using other methods of communication, if needs be.

Grateful for a response.

Thanks,
Anita

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@SketchUpTeam I was also interested to know if SketchUp has any plans to open up communication with training providers, to at least provide advance notice of planned updates? From SketchUp introduced its subscription model, the number of updates has dramatically increased annually, and as a result I’ve had to make more ad hoc revisions to my course content; to the extent that later this year, after I’ve launched my new 3D rendering course (SketchUp & V-Ray); that I’m going to have to completely update my entire SketchUp Bundle course (currently available) which focuses on 2D plans. It is now very out of date having been launched only 4 years ago.

Maybe this happens already (communication with training providers) and I’m not aware of this, especially as I’m UK based. I see that SketchUp still only publicises US based trainers on its website and that as a SketchUp Visiting Professional, I’m still not included on the SketchUp website as a trainer, nor is my background information available to read on Trimble. Should I be taking this personally?! :thinking:

I’d love to see a more inclusive approach, from an international perspective from SketchUp especially as my customer base, as an online service is incredibly international, with most of my customers residing in the US, Canada, Austrailia and the UK.

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Why don’t you create an own template?

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Contact your local distributor, since they’re the one that can authorize training centers for their ‘territory’.

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I will do but as I’ve mentioned in my post, I would have thought SketchUp would be keen to have this already in place to encourage efficient workflow. They already had it in place and for reasons only known to SketchUp, replaced it with a less efficient template.

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I’d rather chat with SketchUp about this than a local distributor, thanks.

7

Good luck, then…

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Do you think you are chatting with the Sketchup team on here? We are all end users, like you. Sure, there are members of the Team that keep an eye on posts and sometimes chip in.

The obvious answer to your issue has already been mentioned. Create your own templates. If I were teaching Sketchup (God forbid!), I would definitely have a lesson on that. I am pretty sure that no frequent professional user would rely on the default templates.

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Just to clarify my last response, we (I work for an ‘official partner’ of SketchUp) have setup and authorised many ‘ATC’s’ in our region.

SketchUp has divided the world in two area’s:
America/Canada and the rest of the world.

If one resides in the first part of the world, you can apply to be listed as ‘official trainer’ (become a partner)

If not, one needs to go through ‘the channel’ (Distributors)

They can authorize ATC’s, but only if that ATC is also a reseller, it would show up on sketchup.com.

They won’t show up as ATC solely.

Been working on that for four years or so…( changing the way the world works:)

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From a user perspective, as a trainer one of the first things I would learn my students is to set up everything in SketchUp so that it is streamlined for a particular workflow and save that as the default template…

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Less efficient for you maybe, but maybe not for others!
Different uses of SketchUp demands different workflows and different templates.
And the beauty is: you can make your own!

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I can only comment on the template. Ideally you create your own templates for both SketchUp and Layout. I save mine outside of the program on my storage drive. When I start a new project, I simply go to my templates folder and open the file. It’s far faster and more consistent than opening SU and then selecting a template.

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Nothing quite like making your users jump through hoops, eh?!

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I’m pretty sure a white background would be the preferred setup for many different, professional disciplines. I’m not asking for a groundbreaking revision. It was already in place.

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Simon, I guess I assumed that SketchUp would be keeping an eye on feedback! Maybe I’m being an idiot. Or maybe I needed somewhere to vent. Who knows!

SketchUp is all about efficient workflows. In my mind, as both a user and trainer, it stands to reason that if you have a dozen pre-configured default templates, you’d want to include one that is best suited for general professional use; like they already had in place before this recent update. Even for new users, to encourage speedy setup to get started. I’m not asking for anything outrageous, like I dunno, the ability to properly map textures?! Lol

But like you’ve said, and what I’ve already mentioned too; I will show my students how to create their own :slight_smile:

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Hi Nick,

I have created my own templates, and I had planned on showing my students how to create their own in my next round of updates anyway.

But that doesn’t negate my point: if SketchUp are going to provide pre-configured templates, they should make them useful. This is SketchUp Pro; they should have a generic, professional use template already setup to get their users up and running without making them go and create their own. Especially for newbies; who don’t need or want the added hastle at the early stages of having to create their own templates.

I’m not sure your method is faster! I rarely change my Drawing Templates. All I do is start up SketchUp and go, as you can choose to have the same template as your default. The only time I’ve had to revise a template is due to a change of units and even then I don’t need to pick an entirely different template, whether provided by SketchUp or not; all I do is change the units in the actual file.

I’m sorry, I don’t agree that you should be bothered with creating templates when you’re just learning how to use SketchUp. It’s not rocket science: provide a template with a white background. Problem solved.

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I think the supplied templates are suggestions. What you consider useful may not be useful to me. There is no way the developers could guess what each individual user would want for a template. Personally, I do not use the supplied templates. Mine are pre-configured with scenes set up to save some work later in the process. The same goes for Layout.

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Thanks for clarifying! :slight_smile:

I’ve looked into the ATC thing and it’s not something I’m interested in, especially as this has substantial yearly costs. I’m just wondering, do the trainers listed on the SketchUp website pay a fee also? :thinking:

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Hey! They already had the perfect pre-configured template provided in their suggestions! They changed it!

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Temp07aW - Interiors.skp (273.8 KB)

Temp07bW - Interiors.skp (273.8 KB)

Here we are:

  1. You can copy these files to:
    c:\Program Files\SketchUp\SketchUp 2022\Resources\en-US\Templates\
    (Maybe you need administration rights to do it…)
    Then you can select then from Default Templates:
    image
    image666×683 94.7 KB

    .
  1. Or you can copy it to :
    c:\Users\Your_User_Name\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp\SketchUp 2022\SketchUp\Templates\
    Then you can select them from My Templates:
    image