How to resolve : unexpected error occured Initializing Android Designer" in VS 2015 with Xamarin

Question

Bringing up a new PC with Xamarin and VS 2015 Pro I received the following error:

An unexpected error occurred trying to initialize Android Designer.

Answer 1

I was able to to fix the issue by opening the Android SDK Manager and updating all the tools to the latest version.

Answer 2

Adding these two references to Droid.csproj and packages.config fixed the problem for me:

<package id="Xamarin.Android.Support.Animated.Vector.Drawable" version="23.3.0" targetFramework="monoandroid60" />

<package id="Xamarin.Android.Support.Vector.Drawable" version="23.3.0" targetFramework="monoandroid60" />