SketchUp 2013

Version Numbers:
Win 13.0.3689
Mac 13.0.3688

SketchUp:

New Features and FYI's:

  • An Extension Warehouse has been created and integrated with SketchUp. Users can now manage hundreds of extensions installed on their computer via the Extension Warehouse.
  • The word "SketchUp" now refers to a product family of which there are two members: SketchUp Pro and SketchUp Make.
  • Toolbars for SketchUp on Windows operating systems have been improved. They are now customizable and more reliably stay put once they have been docked, or you can customize by right-clicking in the toolbar area.
  • Scene-based animations can now be exported to high-quality video from SketchUp.
  • Toolbars and cursors have been updated and made consistent between SketchUp, LayOut, Style Builder and SketchUp Viewer.
  • The Select tool is now the default tool.
  • We have a new SDK. See the "getting_started.html" and "migration_guide.html" in the SDK package for details.
  • Lots of little tweaks, bugs fixes and improvements were made to existing features.
  • SketchUp no longer will take a long time to open and close with an unstable Internet connection.
  • (Mac) SketchUp does not support OS X 10.6 and older versions of OS X. Users with these platforms will see an error on launch.
  • (Windows) XP SP3 is now required to run SketchUp on XP.

Extension warehouse/Ruby plugins:

  • We are installing only the following extensions with the product : Advanced Camera Tools, Dynamic Components, Sandbox Tools, Photo Textures. The other SketchUp 8 extensions (Ruby Script Examples, Ocean Modeling, Utilities Tools, Shadow Strings Fix toolbar, Solar North toolbar) are available for download on the Extension Warehouse.
  • The plugins directory on the Mac has moved to ~/Library/Application Support/SketchUp 2013/SketchUp. We no longer install anything into the Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/SketchUp directory.

SketchUp Toolbars (Windows only):

  • Toolbars now stay put and you can customize toolbars containing non-Ruby tool icons!
  • The SketchUp 8 "Save toolbar positions" menu choice has been removed as it is no longer needed - toolbar settings are saved when exiting SketchUp.
  • View > Toolbars shows just one menu choice now. Customization of toolbars has been moved to one dialog.
  • SketchUp 2013 does not have the ability to create 2 column vertical toolbars (a limitation of the libraries we used as the basis of our new toolbars). If you want to create a setup similar to what is in SketchUp 8, you can either create a few new custom toolbars, docking them side by side to create 2 columns, or you can dock some of our smaller toolbars side by side.
  • To customize non-Ruby toolbars, bring up the View > Toolbars dialog. You can move an icon from one toolbar to another by dragging it or pressing the Alt key. Holding down the Ctrl key allows you to copy an icon. Right clicking on a toolbar gives you some additional functionality.

Known issues:

  • (Mac) Photo texture dialog turns black when switching faces. The workaround is to disable HWA in Safari. See this article for how to do that.
  • (Mac) The "Create new Style" button does not create a style with a unique name. To workaround this issue, rename new styles to have unique names.
  • (Localization) Function names for some dynamic components functions are incorrectly translated in some languages. When selecting these functions via the Dynamic Component interface, users will need to re-name them to their proper English names for them to work.
  • (Windows) a "CFileException 3..." error occurs when auto-save activates if the "Models" directory in Preferences > Files is set to a location that does not exist..."
  • (Windows) The status bar no longer shows text when hovering over a menu item or toolbar icon.
  • (Mac) When using the drac-select feature to select things, ghost artifacts can be seen.
  • (Windows) Menu items/toolbar become grayed out when clicking in and out of the SketchUp window. The menu items/toolbars are fully functional though and moving the SketchUp window returns them to their correct appearance.
  • Section planes are not immediately visible when they are copied into a new document. Work around this issue by toggling on section planes in the Styles dialog box (View > Section Planes)
  • (Mac) Solid, body, and region entities can not be imported by the DWG importer. Not a regression.
  • Google login is sometimes shown when selecting File > Generate Report or when selecting Window > Photo Textures. Logging in to your Google account when selecting Window > Photo Textures appears to be a workaround that fixes both the Photo Textures and Generate Report functionality.
  • (Extension Warehouse) Translations still not 100% complete throughout the site.
  • (Extension Warehouse) When you submit a developer application, you sometimes see an error "Email was not sent." But we should have received the application anyway.
  • (Extension Warehouse) Mouse scroll wheel doesn't work until you click into the dialog.

LayOut:

General

  • Changes were made to improve overall performance with LayOut.
  • Shapes can now be filled with image-based patterns in addition to solid colors. This is called Pattern Fill.
  • LayOut now has the ability to create multi-copy arrays, similar to the way SketchUp works.
  • Text leader lines can now be curved.
  • Users can now zoom in to a document up to 10,000%.
  • To better reflect standards, dimensions now have dashes to separate feet from inches.

Known Issues

  • (Localization) LayOut will continue to use Templates, Scrapbooks, and Pattern Fills from the previous install of LayOut after upgrading or reinstalling. This will only become apparent if the user has gone from one language version of LayOut to a different language version. It will appear as if there are no templates to choose from in the getting started screen. Navigate to Preferences > Folders and click on restore defaults for Templates and Scrapbooks and restart LayOut. After, the application will work as designed.
  • The thumbnail images shown by the Pattern Fill inspector will have a white background by default, which is visible for any non-opaque pixels in the image. For some types of pattern images that use white linework, it is necessary to override this default white background with something darker to make the white linework visible. This can be achieved by saving the PNG file with a bKGD chunk (background color). Gimp is free and supports this option when exporting PNG files.
  • LayOut's page draw performance is noticeably slower on a Macbook pro with retina display than it was on previous generation non-retina Macbook pros. With the retina display, there are 4 times as many pixels to fill every time the page is drawn, but the processing power of this first generation of the Macbook Pro retina is not 4 times better than its non-retina predecessor. For users working with very complex pages in a LayOut document that suffer from sluggish performance, there is a setting that allows the user to force an application to run in low resolution on a retina display. See the section "I'm noticing functional or visual issues with an application. How can I make it work better?" here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5266