Where are my extensions and plugins?

I have upgraded to Sketchup Pro 2021. When I launched the program, I no longer see my extension, plugins, or even the SketchUcation Plugins Manager. How do I get these into the 2021 version? Do I have to reinstall all of them? Can someone give me some guidance on this

Each major version of SketchUp installs as a separate program.

Yes. Best practice is to install them fresh from their sources to make sure you have the latest version of the extensions. Often there are changes that require extensions to be updated for the new version.

If you have the Sketchucation Extension Store in your previous version and you used it to install extensions from Sketchucation, you can install the tool in SU2021 and use it to install your bundle of extensions from Sketchucation.

Not only does installing the extensions get you the most current versions, it lets you do a little house keeping. Don’t install extensions you haven’t been using anyway.

I have Have the Sketchucation Extension Store in 2020, Should I just reinstall the Sketchucation Extension Store from the Sketchucation site and start from there?

Yes. Go to Sketchucation, download the Extension Store tool from Resources at the top. Then in Sketchup go to Window>Extension Manager, click on Install Extension, navigate to where you saved the downloaded file, select the file, and choose Open. Then you should be able to open it and sign into your Sketchucation account. Click on the gear icon, then go to Bundles and select the bundle from your 2020 install. Keep in mind this will only install extensions you got from Sketchucation using the tool in 2020.

Hey, Thanks Dave! I think we are all set. One more question please. Can I delete SketchUp 2020 or should I keep it for some unknown reason. I like to free up space if I can.

I’d hold on to it for a while, anyway. Make sure you’ve collected your assets like materials and styles and such. Then you can uninstall it.

OK. I did have some materials I had downloaded. Not many. Hope I can find them.

As Dave says, for the amount of space you would gain you are better off holding onto it. You never know what your experience with 2021 will be like, you may find extensions you need don’t work or a renderer isn’t updated yet, and so on.

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Depends on where you put them. I put my added materials in a user file under User/App Data/Roaming/SketchUp/… The App Data directory is normally hidden so you’d do well to unhide that if that’s where you put your materials.

Yea, I put them some where like that too. You helped me with this before, so I will just check my notes. Thanks for your help again. You are good at this.

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Thank you. I guess after 18 years (17 versions) of dealing with SketchUp and updates, I’ve started to remember things. :wink:

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Finally!!!

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remember that there is some things in both the c:\programdata\sketchup dir as well as the roaming profile directory (usually i see a split between components and materials in programdata and templates and plugins in the roaming\sketchup folder.
note these can be set in the Windows->Preferences->Files menu in SU.

I don’t put anything related to materials, styles, templates, or other custom assets into Program Data. Good way to lose it if SketchUp needs to be reinstalled and the folders get overwritten. All of my added content goes into a user directory under App Data/Roaming.

I’ve seen too many cases where users lost their custom materials or styles because they put them in the wrong place.

agreed, but that is why i back up :slight_smile: i use OneDrive for the destination, but use FreeFileSync to copy my plugins, materials, components, templates etc as well as my working folders over to a folder in my OneDrive directory. i run the sync daily. then if i need to restore somethings like templates etc i reverse the sync after i do an update or install which changes or remove my stuff, and viola! everything back where it needs to go. this is how i keep my laptop and desktop machines in sync. updates to my plugins and etc are captured and saved in the cloud… and because i initiate the FreeFileSync manually, auto-sync “features” like OneDrive or Google Drive are not impactful to my setup. they’re merely used as backup repositories

in the case of the 2021 install, i only copied manually from the 2020 folders a few things each in order to test it… so i’ve not done a full restore of plugins etc, until i work out the issues and report on them (some screen jumping, flickering not in 2020, the redundant non saving styles, some weirdness in the few plugins where the rb! extension added via SCF plugin management is ignored and the plugins are still treated as simply .rb - like some “bad file name” correcting being done. i haven’t moved my .rb.man files (for loading and running manually) yet, so we’ll see, and i’ll report later).

The exclamation mark is added to .rb files by the SCF tool when you choose to disable the extension. It prevents the extension from loading the next time you start SketchUp.

Backing up is a good thing but I’ve never worried about it for SketchUp’s ProgramData files. When it’s time to set up a new SketchUp version, I go to the previous AppData/Roaming/…/SketchUp folder, copy Components, Materials, Styles, and Templates folders, open the equivalent SketchUp folder for the new version and paste those folders. Done. Those folders do get backed up by Cobian Backup but I also keep the older SU version folders for awhile.

understood why thr rb! does it, just that i’m seeing plugins load in 2021 that don’t load in 2020…

i figured out that the save of the style is based on the internal date stamp in the innards XML file so if you try to save a style without updating it, it will let you go through the process of saving it but then never actually does. so, for example, end a sentence in the description section with a period. then hit the circle-arrows to update, then save, it now saves it, and overwrites if desired.

it seems like a nice safety “feature” but it would be even more handy to have a message that says “style has not changed. save it as another file?” etc. so you know what the application is doing - essential not going to save it as an existing style file unless you have changed it… not imho it matters if i choose to overwrite the same file, but it does allow me to overwrite another file and then i have both names showing up in the list…

probably would be best to simply disable “save-as” unless 1) the style is edited, and 2) refreshed as the in-model style. then save-as is enabled, this makes it a two step deliberate effort to make changes so the write function is then performed by someone who is trying to do those steps… and some help / tool tips to explain it…

for now, possibly some edits on the next update to reflect this in the help files and/or tool tips to explain current behavior.