Install Issues

Hi there,

I am having some issues with getting the plugin to load for a client. Sketchup Make 2014 is installed with all prerequisites, and I follow the instructions for iRender too. However when loading sketchup, the plug-in isnt loaded automatically, and when I go to Install Extension and browse to the iRender folder, no valid rbz file is found.

What am I likely doing wrong here?

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on May 29, 2014 at 7:00am

Sorry that you are having so much trouble getting IRender nXt to appear.

SketchUp 2014 now looks for plugins in the User's AppData folder.

If the user is an administrator, then the plugin files should automatically get placed in the proper location. There is no RBZ file to run, our installation places the plugin files directly in the Plugins folder.

However, if the installation was run while logged in as a different user, or using Run as Administrator as a different user, then the plugin files would be installed in the wrong place.

One quick way to fix this would be to make the user an administrator and reinstall the plugin.

Another way, would be to simply copy the plugin files to the user's AppData folder as described below.

The first thing to check is the location of where we installed the plugin files.

Could you start the IRender nXt install again and note the location where we are going to install it?

I see:

You should see:

C:\Users\[Your User Name]\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp\SketchUp 2014

The full path to where we are installing the plugin folders would be:

C:\Users\[Your User Name]\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp\SketchUp 2014/SketchUp/plugins

We don't show the full path on the installation dialog because we mainly wanted people to notice the version of SketchUp where it was being installed.

You can stop the re-installation there. We just wanted to see where the plugin files were installed.

Then, while running SketchUp 2014 as your user, could you open the Ruby Console window:

and type in:

Sketchup.find_support_file('plugins') and click on "Enter".

You should see something like this:

for you, it should show:

C:/Users/[Your user Name]/AppData/Roaming/SketchUp/SketchUp 2014/SketchUp/plugins

That folder is the destination where we want to copy the plugin files, so that the plugin will appear in SketchUp 2014.

Use File Explorer to find and copy these 2 files and this folder, from where they were installed to the user's plugin folder:

Then IRender nXt should appear under Plugins, the next time the user runs SketchUp 2014.

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Permalink Reply by Karl on June 1, 2014 at 8:14pm

Hi Rich,

Firstly, thank you for your comprehensive assistance, this is better than what I sometimes recieve on a first contact from paid support providers.

Based on your instructions, I have determined that I was choosing the wrong place to install the plug in, I had it going to the Sketchup directory itself. Now that it is going to the users profile it works perfectly.

On another topic, at the moment, it seems that the C++ Redist is hard coded to install even if the same version is already installed. In a future version, might you be able to do a check and only install if missing?

Thanks again,
Karl

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on June 1, 2014 at 10:32pm

We don't have a way to see if some of the redists have already been installed by other software packages, but we only install the redists we need one time. We save an entry in the registry to let us know not to install the same redist a second time. That seems to be working for me. Since I reinstall the plugins about once a day while testing thins, I got very tired of waiting for the redists to run.

Please let me know if you are seeing any of them being reinstalled when you reinstall IRender nXt.

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Permalink Reply by Lauren Smith on June 11, 2014 at 10:39am

Hi Rich, I am having similar installation issues, but as far as I can tell, I've followed all directions and have located the file where the plug ins are supposed to reside, but sketchup is prompting me to find rbz files and Arielvision is an rb file. This is the error I get upon loading:

Error Loading File C:/Users/lsmith/AppData/Roaming/SketchUp/SketchUp 2014/SketchUp/Plugins/RPS_ArielVision/RPS_ArielVision2.rb
Error: #<LoadError: cannot load such file -- win32ole>
C:/Users/lsmith/AppData/Roaming/SketchUp/SketchUp 2014/SketchUp/Plugins/RPS_ArielVision/RPS_ArielVision2.rb:253:in `require'
C:/Users/lsmith/AppData/Roaming/SketchUp/SketchUp 2014/SketchUp/Plugins/RPS_ArielVision/RPS_ArielVision2.rb:253:in `startup_arielvision'
C:/Users/lsmith/AppData/Roaming/SketchUp/SketchUp 2014/SketchUp/Plugins/RPS_ArielVision/RPS_ArielVision2.rb:367:in `<top (required)>'
C:/Program Files (x86)/SketchUp/SketchUp 2014/Tools/extensions.rb:197:in `require'
C:/Program Files (x86)/SketchUp/SketchUp 2014/Tools/extensions.rb:197:in `load'
C:/Users/lsmith/AppData/Roaming/SketchUp/SketchUp 2014/SketchUp/Plugins/RPS_ArielVision.rb:13:in `register_extension'
C:/Users/lsmith/AppData/Roaming/SketchUp/SketchUp 2014/SketchUp/Plugins/RPS_ArielVision.rb:13:in `<top (required)>'
Error Loading File RPS_ArielVision2.rb
Error: #<LoadError: cannot load such file -- win32ole>
C:/Users/lsmith/AppData/Roaming/SketchUp/SketchUp 2014/SketchUp/Plugins/RPS_ArielVision2.rb:253:in `require'
C:/Users/lsmith/AppData/Roaming/SketchUp/SketchUp 2014/SketchUp/Plugins/RPS_ArielVision2.rb:253:in `startup_arielvision'
C:/Users/lsmith/AppData/Roaming/SketchUp/SketchUp 2014/SketchUp/Plugins/RPS_ArielVision2.rb:367:in `<top (required)>'

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on June 11, 2014 at 11:05am

There is a bug in the current version of SketchUp 2014, where some plugins like ours, which use sketchup ruby modules like 'win32ole', will not load if you start SketchUp by clicking on a file on a hard drive other that your C Drive.

Could you test and see if this is what is causing this by opening SketchUp by clicking on file "SketchUp.exe" in:

C:/Program Files (x86)/SketchUp/SketchUp 2014

to start SketchUp.

If ArielVision loads correctly when opening SketchUp that way, the current work-around is to open SketchUp first, and then use their 'Open' dialog to select the file on the other drive, until they post a fix for this.

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Permalink Reply by Lauren Smith on June 11, 2014 at 11:12am

That works! Thank you! The reason I downloaded a trial of the new version is because I was getting a error with my render because of a tree. I read on forums that I should try to download the new NF05 version. Hopefully this will work!

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on June 11, 2014 at 11:21am

If not, send me a small model with the tree in it and I'll try it here.

rich.hart@renderplus.com

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Permalink Reply by Lauren Smith on June 11, 2014 at 11:40am

If the model is 43MB, is that the problem (it's all the stupid trees)?

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on June 11, 2014 at 11:57am

It sure could be.

Especially if those trees are placed many times each, then the geometry that we need to send to the render can get really huge and really bog down the process.

Are these IRender nXt trees, or some other kind of tree?