How to Avoid Bugsplat in Sketchup | 5 Quick tips to Save Your work

 It's very funny how Sketchup always crashes at the best moments,  on start, random crash, when exploding a component, when opening a file, when making components , on startup, when saving, when exporting pdf, when exporting dwg, when importing dwg, when you use Joint Push Pull plugin or any other plugin, Sketchup crashes, Sketchup always crashes.

Sometime there is no real fix for the crashes, and you will need to change the way you are doing things, Sketchup crashes constantly,  keeps crashing  , Mac or Win , get used to it! You need to be prepared to any crash at anytime by saving constantly or using some of these tricks: 

1- The magic CTRL+C / CMD+C (everything will remain in RAM): 

If you copy anything in Sketchup, even if you select an entire scene of 100MB, it will remain in RAM after you close Sketchup (or after crash) unless you copy another thing (text, file, printscreen etc...) try it now, open Sketchup copy the Sketchup Dude, close Sketchup (File > quit), open Sketchup again , and hit paste CTRL+V or Edit > Paste in place. 

The RAM trick can be used to make mutiple copies/versions of the same work, for an example if you are uncertain of the modification you are doing you can keep a copy of the version of the component or scene you are working on in RAM (CTRL+C) and paste it any time you want.

The trick can be mixed with the revert option, you can Always revert to the original state if you did not save by choosing File>Revert.

2- The Magic CTRL+S / CMD+S right before crash : 

Sometimes Sketchup will crash right after finishing a task, ie importing a large DWG file esp converted ones (from PDF), you hit the save shotcut (CTRL+S) right after you see the import dialog, this will give you the chance to save the imported file then Sketchup crash after that, yeah who cares, crash or $%^ yourself.

3- Auto-save:

Double edge sword, it can cause some lags and freezes from time to time but will save your work, you can reduce the frequency of Auto-save from the default to 5 min, go the Preferences > General > Auto-save, tick it and reduce it to the desired number.

Sketchup Auto save Settings

 

4- The Backup file:

In addition to the Auto-save option, activating "create backup" in Sketchup preferences, will make a copy of your Sketchup file as .SKB (Windows), Filename~.SKP (Mac) , that you can rename it / change extension to SKP and use it case the original file becomes corrupted, too large to open, or for any other reason.

5- The Components Window: 

If you accidentally deleted components or groups from your Sketchup scene and you did not purge your Sketchup file, you will be able to find all components and groups that you modeled or used in your scene by going to Window > component > click the Home Icon, click the desired component/group to place it again in you scene.

Sketchup Component window