Installing Google Sketchup 8 on all the computers in your network
Prepare Google Sketchup 8 Files
Download GoogleSketchUpWEN.exe from http://dl.google.com/sketchup/GoogleSketchUpWEN.exe
Run the installer, but dont click next on the first prompt that appears
Open your temp folder - you can access this by clicking Start -> Run and type %temp% into the run box
Look for the folder with the latest creation date and open it - it should have two files - GoogleSketchUp8.msi and setup.exe in it.
Copy GoogleSketchUp8.msi into a new folder on your computer. Close the Google Sketchup 8 setup window.
Prepare Google Sketchup 8 for deploment
Edit GoogleSketchUp8.msi with an msi editor , like Orca, and change the INSTALLGOOGLETOOLBAR property to 0 to disable the google toolbar installation.
Create a new registry file to prevent the update service, and to choose the default template:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\SketchUp8\Preferences]
"DefaultTemplate"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Google SketchUp 8\\Resources\\en-US\\Templates\\Temp01b - Simple.skp"
"CheckForUpdates"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\SketchUp8\WelcomeDialog]
"ShowOnStartup"=dword:00000000
If you are using mandatory profiles, these settings can also be edited onto your ntuser.man file
Deploy Google Sketchup 8
Copy the GoogleSketchUp8.msi, and the .mst to your msi deployment share, and add the msi (don't forget to add the mst too!) to the software deployment GPO.
Add the Reg key to the login script so users get the default template and do not get update prompts.
You will also need to create the AppData folder on each workstation - see the Google SketchUp Wont Open section below.
Google SketchUp Wont Open
I found that Google SketchUp wont run if the Google SketchUp 8 folder is missing from the All users profile.
On Windows 7 there needs to be a folder C:\ProgramData\Google\Google SketchUp 8
On Windows XP it needs to be C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Google\Google SketchUp 8
You can create this folder with a computer startup script, or add the folders to the mandatory profile AppData folder