SketchUp Desktop 2020.2

Table of Contents

1. What's New in SketchUp 2020.2?
2. SketchUp Release Notes
3. LayOut Release Notes
4. SketchUp/LayOut API Release Notes

What's New in SketchUp 2020.2?

In SketchUp Pro 2020.2, we are introducing some improvements based on longstanding user feedback. Some changes are straightforward enough—Weld!—while others are new concepts to explore in SketchUp and LayOut.

Weld Edges

In 2020.1, we introduced API functionality to weld edges in SketchUp. If you aren't aware, extension developers previously had to do some wacky stuff to perform a weld operation. Looking forward, we hope to see this improve the performance for individual extensions. In 2020.2, Weld Edges is a native capability for SketchUp users as well. The new command is contextual to a selection of edges, available in the right-click context menu, from within the Edit menu, and available as a shortcut as well. Learn more about the new Weld functionality.

Linear inference toggle for the Line Tool

You can now turn off linear inferencing while using the Line tool. To give it a go: activate the Line tool, start drawing a line, and hit the Alt (Windows) / Command (Mac) modifier key to toggle off directional inferencing. SketchUp will now ignore all linear—red, blue, green, magenta—inferences. Hit the toggle again and the only inference you'll snap to is Parallel/Perpendicular (magenta). One more tap, and you are back to standard inferencing. Without changing toggles, arrow key inference locks are still available, so you can jump from no inferences to a specific one pretty quickly. Learn more about the new Line Tool inference toggling.

Line style 'overrides' for Tags in LayOut

You can now control the edge width, scale, color, and stipple pattern for SketchUp tags in LayOut. This means that by applying tags in SketchUp, you can control the style of your linework in LayOut… without stacking multiple viewports. To get going: select a viewport in LayOut, open the SketchUp Model inspector dialog, and expand the Tags panel. Now, click on the line style of a tag to pull up styling options. For tags without a line style applied, click 'Default' to pull up the styling options.

We call these changes to the styling of tags 'overrides' because they persist across model reference updates. Once you set line styles for various tags in a model viewport, you shouldn't have to repeat the exercise. Click 'Reset' to return to the viewport to its default styling. Learn more about the new Line Style override behavior in LayOut.

LayOut selection and transformation improvements

Good LayOut documents are an arrangement of viewports, images, vector graphics, labels… everything just so. As pages get more complex and documents get longer, operating on selections gets slower. In 2020.2, we are introducing some slight but significant modifications to LayOut's selection and transformation behavior that should improve the experience of moving, copying, and scaling selections in larger projects. The key difference is that LayOut now previews your transformation, instead of drawing it in real-time as you are manipulating a selection. Learn more about the new view transformations in LayOut.

Mac Installer

Installation of SketchUp on Mac is simpler with this release! Here are the changes you will see:

• The installer has been reverted back to DMG format. It is no longer distributed as a .zip file, but rather as a .dmg file as it was prior to version 2020.1.
• The installer is launched by double-clicking the downloaded .dmg file. This opens a Mac installation window where you simply drag the SketchUp icon to the Applications folder.
• That's it! You are no longer presented with language selection dialogs because all localized SketchUp languages are bundled in a single installer file, and they all will be installed automatically.
• This also means we no longer have separate "Online" and "Offline" installers for Mac. So an internet connection is not required for installing SketchUp on Mac.
• These changes only apply to macOS platforms, not Windows.

Windows Installer

The SketchUp installer for Windows has been modified to not allow changes to language selections or the destination directory when upgrading from one version of SketchUp 2020 to another. If such changes are needed, you will need to first uninstall the previous version and then run the SketchUp 2020.2 installer, specifying the desired languages and/or directory.

You can download the SketchUp 2020.2 Installer here.

SketchUp Release Notes

Bug fixes / small features added

Stability

• Fixed a crash that could occur when copy/pasting geometry onto a midpoint.
• Fixed a crash that could occur with the Offset tool when using the Select All shortcut.
• (Win) Fixed a crash that could occur when accessing the Outliner when it has not been completely populated.
• (Win) Fixed an issue where pressing the Escape key while the 3D Warehouse dialog was loading components would cause SketchUp to freeze.

Model Display

• Fixed an issue where you could see clipping when using parallel projection in some models.
• Fixed an issue where components with dark colors did not always display as expected when hovering over an obscured bounding box grip with Move or Rotate.
• Fixed an issue where opaque materials would not always appear transparent when hovering over obscured bounding box grips.
• Fixed an issue where section planes could fail to hide when editing a component with 'Hide Rest of Model'.
• Fixed an issue where active section planes within a component could become inactive in all scenes when reloading a component.

UI

• Fixed an issue where the UI of some extensions sometimes drew with a hatched pattern when View > Hidden Objects was on in models with faster transparency.
• Improved the phrasing in the dialog that appears when removing a Tag.
• Updated the copyright symbol in the SketchUp and Viewer Help > About dialogs.
• (Win) Fixed an issue that occurred when selecting a new sort column in the Tags dialog, where the Tag sort order was not sorting according to the previous sort order.
• (Mac) Fixed an issue where the Options text box would not fully display the translated text.
• (Mac) Fixed an issue where the “Please don't show this again” checkbox was rendered behind text in the Name Section Plane dialog.
• (Mac) Fixed an issue where localized text was truncated in the Preferences dialog.

Install

• Fixed problems with upgrading SketchUp Viewer from a previous version.
• (Win) Fixed an issue that occurred when both SketchUp and the Checkup utility were installed on a system, and an uninstall of Checkup was done. This prevented SketchUp from running.
• (Win) Fixed an issue where uninstalling the Checkup utility would corrupt SketchUp.
• (Win) Fixed an issue where uninstalling SketchUp would also uninstall Checkup.
• (Win) Fixed an issue where a custom installation directory was not retained when upgrading.
• (Mac) Fixed a problem where the SU 2020.1 installer would freeze if a previous version of SketchUp was running at the same time.
• (Mac) Fixed an issue that occurred when the Mac system was set to a non-English language, and some localized languages were previously installed, but the SketchUp 2020.1 installer did not always pre-select the correct languages when upgrading.

Miscellaneous

• Improved the Measure tool when using the Control (Win) and Option (Mac) modifier keys to persist the modifier key behavior until selecting another tool.
• Fixed a performance lag that could occur when turning on shadows in some models.
• Fixed an issue where Outliner would not populate when doing a Rotate / Copy of a Component or Group.
• Fixed an issue to make sure the "preserve origin" option works correctly when importing a DWG file from the User Interface and with the Ruby Console.
• Improved the “Check models for problems” behavior to find more issues, especially related to persistent IDs.
• Fixed issues with incorrect or missing JA and zh-CN language translations.
• (Win) Fixed an issue where the ALT key function would interrupt the workflow of the Rotate tool when cycling through component grips.
• (Win) Addressed a performance problem where the Entity tag listing was slow to change tag names with a large amount of tags.
• (Mac) Fixed an issue where the user could not update components' advanced attributes.

LayOut Release Notes

Bug fixes / small features added

Stability

• (Win) Fixed an issue where the active view could appear frozen when attempting a middle mouse pan with the Pan tool active.
• (Win) Fixed a crash that would occur when exiting the “Welcome to SketchUp” window via the task bar.
• (Mac) Fixed an issue where the active view could appear frozen when using a combination of a trackpad zoom and mouse pan. This would require zooming out to refresh the window.
• (Mac) Fixed a crash on launch when a users region setting is set differently then their actual location.
• (Mac) Fixed a crash that could occur when launching LayOut.
• (Mac) Fixed a crash when rendering certain Fonts.

Performance Improvements

• (Win) Fixed an issue where the SketchUp model panel could 'jump' when modifying the visibility of a Tag or multiple Tags.
• (Win) Improved performance when toggling the visibility of many tags at once.

Miscellaneous

• Addressed an issue preventing you from editing a clipping mask object without first 'releasing the clipping mask'.
• Fixed the SketchUp Model Inspector so that it updates correctly when making a Group or Ungrouping entities.
• Addressed an issue when multiple viewports, where the Line Scale from one of the viewports would be applied to all.
• Fixed an issue when joining lines in a certain order would create random shapes.
• Fixed an issue where exporting to PDF would fail with certain geometry.
• Fixed an issue where the correct cursor would not display during a path manipulation.
• Fixed an issue where the original Tag state would be retained when copying a SketchUp model viewport.
• Fixed an issue where the tab key could not be used to navigate Tag line style options.
• (Mac) Corrected the tooltips for Dashes Scale and Stroke Width as they were backwards.
• (Mac) Improved the Shape Style Inspector dash pattern rendering.

SketchUp/LayOut API Release Notes

Ruby API Additions and Improvements

• Added scope filter to Sketchup::Model#find_entity_by_persistent_id

API Exchange Interface

To allow better interoperability of the Ruby API and C API within the SketchUp application we introduced the ability to exchange entities and image reps between the APIs.

Entities because it's a key type and ImageRep because it can be an expensive object to copy.

• Added SUEntityToRuby
• Added SUEntityFromRuby
• Added SUImageRepToRuby
• Added SUImageRepFromRuby

C API Additions and Improvements

• Added SUSelectionRef
  • Added SUModelGetSelection
  • Added SUModelGetActiveEntities
  • Added SUModelGetActivePath
  • Added SUSelectionAdd
  • Added SUSelectionRemove
  • Added SUSelectionToggle
  • Added SUSelectionClear
  • Added SUSelectionInvert
  • Added SUSelectionGetNumElements
  • Added SUSelectionGetEntityList
  • Added SUSelectionIsType
  • Added SUModelGetEntitiesOfTypeByPersistentIDs
  • Deprecated SUModelGetLayersByPersistentIDs
  • Deprecated SUModelGetEntitiesByPersistentIDs

Bug fixes

Ruby API Bug fixes

• Fixed Unicode characters not displaying correctly in the Ruby Console.
• Fixed DWG import option, ":preserve_origin" being ignored.
• Fixed crash on UI::HtmlDialog#dialog.close directly after UI::HtmlDialog#dialog.show
• Multiple documentation corrections.

C API Bug fixes

• Changed the behavior of SULineStyleSetLengthMultiplier to accept negative multiplier values. The previous behavior was to reject all values less than or equal to zero. Negative values will now trigger "auto" stipple scaling which is described in the documentation. Zero is still an invalid input.
• Changed the behavior of SULineStyleSetWidthPixels to accept line widths less than one. The previous behavior was to reject widths less than one as invalid input. Input widths less than or equal to zero are still invalid.
• Multiple documentation corrections.