SketchUpBIM: Common Questions, and their Quick solutions!

Thousands of architects and engineers have downloaded SketchUpBIM over the past few months. It has been our pleasure to support our customers from United States, Brazil, China, United Kingdom, France, Australia and many other parts of the world.

In this blog, we have summarized the most common questions and their corresponding solutions:

I.                    SketchUpBIM Installation

a.    Question: “I entered my information on the SketchUpBIM Product page to download the software. However, I did not receive any email with the download information. Help!”

Answer: In rare cases, our emails might not reach you due to your company’s firewall and/or spam settings. The solution is simple, please send us an email at support@sketchupbim.com, and we will revert back immediately with the instructions to download and install the software.

b.      Question: “Norton declares that SketchUpBIM.exe has a potential virus. Is the installation file safe?”

Answer: The SketchUpBIM installation file is completely safe and does not contain any virus or malware. It is currently being used by thousands of customers worldwide without any issues. As we have been unable to replicate this issue on our test computers, our best guess is that certain Norton settings on specific computers might be flagging all files with an ‘exe’ extension as a potential risk to the system. The SketchUpBIM installation file has an .exe extension; however it is safe for use on any and all computers.

c.     Question: “I have installed SketchUpBIM. However, I cannot see the SketchUpBIM toolbar inside SketchUp.”

Answer: Please browse to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Google SketchUp 8\Plugins"

on your computer, and see if the following files exist inside this folder: (i) SketchUpBIM.rbs file (ii) SketchUpBIM sub-folder. If not, then please re-install the software using the installation file. If you still cannot see the SketchUpBIM files even after re-installation, then you might not have admin privileges to install softwares into your "Program Files" folder or you might have multiple versions of SketchUp installed on your computer. If this is the case, please send us an email at support@sketchupbim.com. We will send you a link to the zip package of the plug-in that we supply under such special circumstances. The zip package can be easily un-zipped, and the files can be copied to the SketchUp plug-ins folder.

II.                 SketchUpBIM Software

a.     Question: “All the tool buttons are greyed-out. Only the ‘Grid’ and ‘Level’ tools are active, all other tools (walls, columns, beams etc.) are in-active.”

Answer: The first step is to define a “Grid”, and then create a "Level". Once a level is

defined, all primitive tools (like wall, column, beams etc.) get "un-greyed". The viewport automatically switches to plan view, and all tools work on the plan view of the levels. 

b.   Question: “The font on the dialog boxes is too large. I am unable to see all the controls on the dialog boxes. There is no OK or Cancel buttons.”

Answer: This issue is related to the zoom factor in Internet Explorer. To fix this issue, please open up Internet Explorer, and press the "Ctrl" and "0" buttons together. This will reset your zoom factor to 100%; and this will fix your issue inside SketchUp. If this still does not fix your issue, please un-install and re-install SketchUpBIM on your computer. Just FYI – we have fixed this issue permanently (so that it is now independent of the zoom factor inside IE). This fix will be available in the next version of the software.

c.    Question: “SketchUpBIM plug-in has a conflict with my other plug-in. The operations of my other plugin crash after I install SketchUpBIM.”

Answer: Few of our customers have brought this to our notice. There are a few plug-ins that seem to be incompatible with SketchUp 7.1 and SketchUpBIM. Few examples are TIG's 'SectionCutFace' and Chuck Vali's Instant Roof plugins. There might be a few others on the list. The simple solution to this problem is to get the latest version of SketchUp 8 or higher. We have tested several plug-in combinations on SketchUp 8, and there have been no crashes.

We would strongly recommend that you take a quick look at the basic tutorial: http://www.sketchupbim.com/tutorials.html. It's approximately 12 minutes, and we promise that it will make you an expert in using SketchUpBIM. Have fun with SketchUp and SketchUpBIM!