New ComponentFinder Navigation Bar and Toolbars

ComponentFinder 1.0.1 Cover Image

If you're using ComponentFinder, either as the stand alone free tool or together with FlexPack Pro, this update is for you!

ComponentFinder on the FlexTools Toolbar

What's New

New Navigation Bar

The new navigation bar on the left makes it easy to move between open tabs.

ComponentFinder navigation bar

You can drag the icons up and down to change the order of the folders.

Reorganizing Tab Positions in ComponentFinder
Add Folders Button

To add new folders click on the new + button on the bottom of the sidebar.

For those of you who have the FlexPack Pro package, there is a separate icon pinned to the top of the sidebar, so now any of the default Flex components can be pulled in directly from ComponentFinder.

FlexPack Pro package in ComponentFinder

Access the default FlexPack Pro components directly from ComopnentFinder

To save time, we encourage you to customize the default Flex components and then save them aside into a new ComponentFinder folder.  If you'd like to pull them in from a toolbar... now you can do it!  You can create customized toolbars with components of your choice! 😃👇

Custom Component Toolbars

Oh, imagine the toolbars you could make!  Your favorite car collections, trees, planters, people, light fixtures, appliances, chairs, tables, doors, windows...  All your favorite components just one click away!

Toolbars full of components

From now on, any folder open in ComponentFinder can be turned into a toolbar by clicking on the 'Create Toolbar' button.

Create Components Toolbar

Component toolbars can be docked anywhere on the screen (top, bottom, left, right) and will stay in place from session to session until they're closed - just like regular Sketchup toolbars.

📌 Note:  If you've created a components toolbar and then made changes to the components in the original folder - the toolbar will be updated with the correct components only after restarting Sketchup.

Create/Rename/Delete Folders

You can now create, rename or delete folders on your computer without leaving SketchUp.

To create a new folder, right click on the white space inside a tab where you want to see your new folder and choose 'Create New Folder'.

Right click to create a new folder

If you want to rename or delete a folder, right click on it and choose the action.

Right Click to delete or rename folders
Folder Tree View Icon

Make sure you're in Nav Mode to be able to see and browse through folders.

Performance and UI Improvements

Quite a few processes were optimized making component management faster and more convenient:

  • A cleaner user interface (flat UI, refined SVG icons),
  • Improved performance speed of folder tab operations like ordering, moving tabs up/down, closing, minimizing/maximizing etc.  (The improvement should be noticeable with folders that have many components in them),
  • Faster session restoration after restarting Sketchup,
  • Better handling of missing/invalid/read-only files,

  • Component finder will no longer get stuck on the 'Loading' screen.

Bug Fixes and More Improvements

Lots of fixes and improvements, among them:

  • Sorting of components has been improved to use natural item ordering (case-independent and handles numbers as human beings would expect! 🤸‍♂).
  • Fixed an issue where components were displayed in the wrong folder when the name of one folder was a prefix of another.

Many thanks to Filippo Scarso (Pibuz) for the persistence to get these issues fixed!

 

 

👉 See the full list of improvements and bug fixes in the Release Notes 👈

 

*How to update?  See here.

We want to hear you!

We have lists and lists of features we're planning and thinking of adding to ComponentFinder (and to FlexPack Pro), but we would really like to hear what's important for you!