What’s up with SketchUp Make?

I think Trimble somehow view SU Free as a continuation of Make.

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Sketchup Make 2017 and Pro 2018 run perfect on my Ubuntu machine.
This was thanks to the Play on Linux and the Wine programmers.
I didn’t see any action of the Sketchup programmers to make this possible in the past.
They most have an other users on there mind. Probably Chromebook users, and others not using a PC

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That is the total number of Linux users in the world that have access to the internet. The total number of Linux users in the world is even larger, so you might argue that SketchUp Make potential market is even larger and Trimble should have targeted that user base with SketchUp Make, but it didn’t. Why do you suppose that is? One answer is that projecting market potential from numbers like this is a fools game. And to those that would like to use SketchUp, I would highly recommend sticking with SketchUp 8; it is a much better product than SketchUp Free and you have extensions to boot.

Joe…

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Certainly not by putting a lame product on the market and sitting back to see what happens.

Joe…

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I agree. And that’s what scares me.

Joe…

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7 posts were merged into an existing topic: Unable to start SketchUp

Please, start a new topic and do not post unrelated questions at the end of other threads. This thread is for ranting about the discontinuation of SketchUp Make. @TheOnlyAaron - could you split pzbloser’s problem into its own thread

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In fact, move it into the thread that he already started on this issue.

“There’s nothing preventing users from continuing with 2017”. say that to all the plugin developers who will be losing their revenue.
People will not know about the desktop version 2017 who come on board with the free online version. and most likely if they are in the country side where internet is bad and laggy they will get a bad first impression of sketchup and will say so to others.
Without plugin sketch-up online is going nowhere.
Maybe schools may use it and that is your market. but I can’t see businesses taking it up.

This issue is like flat earth for Trimble. Unless they sort it fast it will get louder and more and more videos will show up on youtube each day. LOL

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You sound like a politician. It is clear it is a bad decision, no question about it for the advancement of sketchup as a 3D program when you look at it with Plugins in mind and the plugin developers motivation to build and earn revenue. Most people could use the free 2017 version for the rest of their life and it will do what they require, but it is not about that, it is about building a better faster, easier program for drawing in 3D. which Layout [Which I don’t use] has got the focus of improvement and not the 3D drawing. For me 2018 we get to draw a square from the centre and hover over a line edge to get the dimension in the measurement output. Which is silly having to select another tool when they could of just used the selection tool to do so. And a few bug fixes on the out-liner. Again sections well that is not drawing in 3D. If it where not for fredo plugin. sketchup would be useless to me and all the people I introduced to sketchup since 2005. It would just be to slow for doing things, for example to put rounded corners on edges etc etc. and lots of other issue which the other 3D programs are getting ahead of sketchup. Trimble needs to repent of such a silly decision. Why not offer both options online and download? Just my selfish opinion.

That is an interesting point.
If the developers of extensions don’t find it economically useful to continue supporting them, that will hurt Pro users as well. That does worry me a bit.

Of course I don’t know the stats about how much free users pay for extensions. Maybe its not as much as I expect.

I would expect Trimble to be working on a monthly or Quarterly subscription system for SketchUp Pro so home users can still use Pro for a single project when required. There’s hopefully some middle ground between Free and Pro…right now the gap is very large.

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And that is exactly the point. Trimble is expected to supply and support a product that provides them no revenue and instead actually costs them so that plugin developers can sell their extensions and make money. Strikes me as entitlement.

I expect the majority of SketchUp users who purchase most of the commercial extensions are pro users.

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I don’t know the exact statistics but surveys have shown a larger majority of Make users don’t even use extensions (not even free ones). On the other hand an equally large majority of Pro users do use extensions. Even the Make users that use extensions are much less likely to pay for it as it wont earn them any revenue, whereas a Pro user could save a lot of money by an extension that just slightly improves the workflow. I’m not tracking my own users to get statistics but I know a few developers that do and they have all said this doesn’t bother them.

My revenue as an extension developer is the least of my worries with Make being discontinued.

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AmSoCo is an American software company with a line of products at tiered price points. Each year they introduce new versions at each price point. The new versions offer more performance and more functionality. AmSoCo is a very successful company. They get a little full of themselves and one year decide to reduce the performance and functionality at one of their price points and call it progress. They lose a few customers the first year but write it off to ‘it takes time to adjust to change’. The next year they decide to make a similar move in a higher price point product. This time there is a dramatic loss of revenue. Worse, the customer base has spread the word to new potential users to stay away from AmSoCo; their products are underperforming and the company can’t be trusted to listen to the customer base.

People expect higher performance and more functionality in each new introduction of a product. When they don’t get it and fear similar behavior in the future, they vote with their feet. One should never, ever, replace a product at a price point with less functionality and performance.

Smart companies know that people do expect, and will adjust to, a higher performance and functionality at a higher price. What Trimble should have done is continue SketchUp make but increase the price to $100 - $200 and introduce SketchUp Free as an educational tool for the K-12 education market.

As to whether SketchUp Make users will pay for extensions I can tell you from my own experience that they will. The price point has to be right, but they will. One of my extensions is priced at $20 and approximately 80% of the purchases are from hobbyist SketchUp Make woodworkers. I even have one priced at $250 which is purchased by hobbyists and doing well. There are a lot of quoted surveys or statistics in this thread, but they don’t match my personal experience. I sell a lot of books and training videos on SketchUp Make. So why do we think people won’t pay a reasonable price for SketchUp Make but will pay for books, videos, and extensions? Nonsense!

Joe…

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By the way. My partner and I are working with a number of vocational schools. Their responsibility is to train skilled workers for the real world. The schools we have worked with have already looked at SketchUp for Schools and rejected it in favor of SketchUp Make. They need a tool that can actually represent how things are done in the field. SketchUp for Schools might do very well in K-8. But once a student is in high school, and particularly when they are in vocational school, SketchUp for Schools is not going to fit the bill.

Joe…

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Now, this is why Trimble should include Ruby extensions in SketchUp for Education. Imagine how inspiring it would be for students to learn to code with a real OOP language like Ruby and be able to produce useful functionality. This would really appeal to STEM students.

Joe…

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Gave up trying to test drive SktechUp Free after many attempts. This is what I get on IE on a Win 10 system and on a Win7 pro system. “sketchup.com is not responding due to a long running script” every 20 to 30 seconds. Just tested my internet speed and I’m running at 300 mbs down and 150 mbs up. It is midnight here so can only imagine what it will run like when every one jumps on line during the day. Not impressed by the reduced function of SketchUp Free. Please put me on a list that I hope your compiling to just sell and support the CAD section of SketchUp-Pro to the millions of wood workers, designers, and Engineering and technical types that have grown to love and use this great tool.

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I’ve tried to follow this topic, but I’m not able to read through all the posts… going back to answer questions now.

Do you have many apps installed on IE competing for memory resources? Apps like AdBlock have been known to interfere. I had to disable it on my Chromebook back during the my.sketchup beta.

No AdBlock running on the Win 10 machine. This machine is in my shop and is only there to run my CNC and perform CAD work.

In order to test it I have to run a copper wire from the router to it because it doesn’t have AdBlocker or other software on it that

could cause an interruptions when the machine is running. My main server in the office with WIN 7 Pro on it only had the standard

Norton’s running on it last night. So to state the obvious the Free version will require me to connect my machines up which I will not

be doing.