Hi All,
First of all A Very Happy New Year and a big thanks to all of the people on here that offer help and advice.
I am thinking of upgrading to the latest release. My question is has the process for moving over extensions improved ? What issues can I expect to encounter?
Thanks
Hi. It kind of depends on what you did before. Best practice is to install them fresh to make sure you have the latest version of them. If you have extensions from Sketchucation that were installed with the Sketchucation Extension Store tool, get the latest copy of that from Sketchucation, install it, open the UI and go to Bundles. You can then install the current versions of the extensions in your bundle from the previous install. For extensions from the Extension Warehouse you’ll need to install them individually, still. If you have time and want to live on the edge, you could copy the extensions you have from the previous version’s user Plugins folder and paste them into the new version’s Plugins folder. Be aware that some extensions may give loading errors either because they are out of date or because they require proper installation, not just being copied and pasted. You’ll have to sort out those load errors which will require quitting SketchUp and restarting it.
As for setting up toolbars, I make a screenshot of the previous version and import that into the new version as an image so I can see which tools go where.
Thanks Dave.
I have just copied the plugin directory in the past and sorted out issues as re-installing takes ages. I wish that they would create a better way to do this given that they are releasing a new release once a year. It is painful.
It would be nice but I think it would require a number of things before it would be practical. First it would require that extension authors are forced to keep their extensions updated. Considering that the majority of the extensions are available for free, I doubt many of them would submit to that. Second, it require that users keep all of their extensions up to date Seems like many users don’t don’t want to do that for some reason. And it would require that Trimble somehow have control over installers for third party extensions that cannot just be unpacked into the Plugins folder. The extension for the 3D Connexion devices and Vray for SketchUp come to mind. I think overall there are too many things outside of Trimble’s control to make automatically migrating extensions practical.
It would be nice if the Extension Warehouse had the same sort of “bundle” tool the Sketchucation Extension Store has. It used to have it. Maybe they’ll bring it back.
I seem to collect a lot of extensions either for testing or demonstration or for a one-time need. Migrating to a new SketchUp version gives me a good opportunity to do some housekeeping to remove or at least disable extensions I don’t use so I don’t have to wait for them to all load when SketchUp starts.
Being an old coder, it is typical of a product that has evolved over the years. The specs for any extension, internal or external, should have been defined at the very start with upgrades in mind. Once they are in the Wild West it is impossible to police or will cause major disruptions to try to impose standardisation now.
It is such a pain to do that I review the release to see if it is worth it. I will skip this one as there is very little in it. Once again thank you for responding.
I find it sad that people misunderstand the minutes it takes to install a new version.
I can’t speak to what they should or should not have set up for specs for upgrades of extensions. I do know that it’s difficult to get users to keep their extensions up to date. I’ve seen users whining about messages popping up alerting them to available extension updates.
I’ve updated to every new version of SketchUp since January of 2003. The time invested in doing so is really quite minimal and I see it as just part of doing business. It would be the same sort of thing as sharpening pencils or ordering pens. The cost of that time gets defrayed across my clients, anyway.
That’s your call of course. It probably won’t be all that long and the next version will be released so maybe waiting is the thing.
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