Workspace saving/management in Lab installation

Hi

I teach SketchUp Pro 2015 in a Windows 7 lab environment. All lab users are treated as ‘students’ and our Windows client copies a fresh standard profile to AppData\Roaming each logon - that is not a true Roaming Profile setup.

I also use a number of 3rd part plugins. The problem I have is that all plugin dialogs are presented on the screen at each login. The workspace does get saved per SketchUp launch - but is reset at each Windows login. All prefs and customisations are lost, and SketchUp demands a template choice as per first run. This causes me some disruption in a teaching situation.

Current situation:

As I prefer, and have on my non shared computers:
(sorry - new user - can’t upload two images, but I think you can imagine)

My IT department haven’t been able to deal with this since the move from SU2013, and I don’t think there is an institution-wide appetite for true Roaming for 20000+ students. This isn’t a critical problem but it would be ‘nice’ to fix if possible. Any similar experiences and ideas/solutions? My initial thought is a script that any user can run to load a workspace, possibly initiated by each user on SketchUp run.

The option Save toolbar position was removed since the 2014 version.
I would like to see it working again.
I think there is not a solution unless you can make a Backup of an Key from Windows register.
But is needed on each logon execute the .REG file.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SketchUp\SketchUp 2015

:warning: NOTE: Do not copy the registry settings between SketchUp versions.
Especially those versions without trays and those with trays.

(1) Log onto the “fresh standard profile”
(2) Install all the allowed plugins.
(3) Open all the toolbars that you wish displayed when SketchUp starts, and dock them where they need to be.
(4) Open any inspector tool windows (Layers, Materials, Scenes, etc.) and place and stack them where you wish.
(5) Close SketchUp so all the toolbar and window locations are saved into the registry.

If you cannot log into the “fresh standard profile”, ie, if it is generated “on-the-fly”.
Then you may be able to do like anme suggests, …

(1) Create a new user profile, and log into it.
(2) Install all the allowed plugins.
(3) Open all the toolbars that you wish displayed when SketchUp starts, and dock them where they need to be.
(4) Open any inspector tool windows (Layers, Materials, Scenes, etc.) and place and stack them where you wish.
(5) Close SketchUp so all the toolbar and window locations are saved into the registry.

Then open a command prompt, and use the REG command to save the “SketchUp 2015” hive to a reg file:

REG EXPORT "HKCU\Software\SketchUp\SketchUp 2015" "relative/path/from/current/dir/su2015.reg"

(It is easier to change to the destination directory first.)

You now have a reg file, you can import into any profile with:

REG IMPORT "relative/path/from/current/dir/su2015.reg"

Or, you could edit the file and change all
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER” to “[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT
which would import the settings into a machine’s default user, and any new user created (on that machine,) will inherit those settings.

3 Likes

Thanks anme and Dan. I’ve passed your advice onto our tech support, and I will post back any results.

a small support tool (Win only) for doing the latter by GUI can be downloaded from our SU support section.

no installation, no ads, no malware.

I moved a post to a new topic: Texture Size Configuration

I moved a post to an existing topic: Texture Size Configuration

I know this is a very old topic, but I was wondering if you have an updated (2018) version of this program? I found and tried the original, but it is only good up to 2015.

it’s good up to version 2017.

Since version 2018 the majority of preferences are stored in two json files (see release notes of rev. 2018) which is and will not supported by our support tool anymore.

1 Like