What’s up with SketchUp Make?

Thanks for the feedback, and by all means continue using SketchUp Make as long as you like. We’re still early in the development of SketchUp Free and we have quite a bit of work still left to do. Thanks for giving our new baby a close look.

Performance is difficult to judge, but I assume you’ve come to the conclusion you reached by comparing the performance of SketchUp Make directly against SketchUp Free using the same model, same computer, &etc?

We do the same kind of tests internally, though I haven’t yet got a formal announcement to make about comparative performance. Our expectation going into the development project was that we would lose quite a lot of raw performance by running through the browser; recent developments with WebAssembly have surprised our team with their execution speed. Javascript executes slower than native compiled code, but not really by that much. Graphics performance (via WebGL instead of native OpenGL) is very near to native in most cases.

Performance while saving and opening models will depend on your network topology and on your physical proximity to our datacenter. It will always be slower to load a model over a network than it is to open it from your local disk, but we have the ability to take advantage of your local browser cache to manage that latency. Modern cloud infrastructure (we’re using Amazon’s) is pretty amazing at rebalancing itself dynamically to maximize performance.

Of course, if you have exceptionally large/complex models, your experience may vary. And for that reason, we’re keeping our old desktop applications available to everyone in addition to SketchUp Free.

We do support all of SketchUp’s default keyboard shortcuts (some caveats apply: the browser ‘steals’ a couple of them in ways that we can’t yet work around) but maybe what you’re really hoping to see is a system for managing your own custom shortcuts?

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You wouldn’t have this problem if you deployed your own platform …

Can you say Sketchomium boys and girls ? … TrimbloniumSketchUpOSTrimbleBook ?

:smile:

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In principle I see the logic in the comment. But wouldn’t that further increase the R&D expenditure as well as long term running costs for a limited use application?

It was really mostly a joke.

However, the Trimble Development Team already has some experience with Chromium, as they’ve already compiled it for the SketchUp Ruby API’s new UI::HtmlDialog class.

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I think creating a small application that is really just a wrapper for a browser engine could fix a number of Free’s issues. The window chrome with address bar, tabs, links and all that noise would be cleaned away. Shortcut collisions would be solved, and, maybe most of all, it would feel like a proper application and not a web app.

I think Spotify uses this technology.

For users this could be an alternative to run in in a tab in their browser.

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You can try this now, on SketchUp 2017+.

From the Ruby Console (in a new SketchUp instance with empty model.)
Change the language code if you like.

WD = UI::HtmlDialog.new(dialog_title: "SketchUp Free")
WD.set_url("http://app.sketchup.com/app?hl=en")
WD.show

@jbacus, It seems to be much more responsive to orbit and drawing, than it does under full blown Chrome.
And much faster loading as well! (Old Toshiba Satellite i5 notebook with Intel HD4400 graphics.)

Although copy and paste from the dialog into SketchUp proper is a “no go”.

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I understand the desire to move toward cloud based program in order to stop people from using it for commercial purposes even though those people will figure out a work around anyway ( Like Warez! ) and It’s all well and great that Sketchup is trying to get SUFree to run extensions and perhaps the 3D Connection mouse so that it’s comparable to SUMake!

But the real question still remains, how does any of this solve the problem for those of us with “no or slow at best” internet access?

My vote!

Keep SUFree
Keep SUPro
Add a (paid) lite version for those of us that don’t need and can’t justify paying for all the features of Pro but who still need the ability to use without internet access!

I love it! Although… probably not :wink:

If you remember the early history of Adobe Photoshop, you might recall that they implemented their own virtual memory system before the Macintosh operating system did. That’s how they were able to handle large images with rich color palettes as early in the development of the platform as they did. Well before any other application could do the same. Not quite like implementing their own OS, but similar in some ways.

The only thing I have remaining of my first PowerMac is a screenshot of a Photoshop error message:
“The Photoshop Accelerator for Power Macintosh requires a PowerPC 601 processor. It will not run on your totally cool new whizbang hardware.”
Yes, I had a PowerPC 602 processor, if remembering right. The “accelerator”, I think, was just another of Adobe’s enroachmentsin the OS’s territory.

Yes, manage custom shortcuts comes first - as far as issues related to keyboard shortcuts are concerned.

(Browsers have a bunch of keyboard shortcuts. A few of those browser shortcuts are the same as some of the default shortcuts in SU. At this time, browser app developers cannot override browser shortcuts. Give this issue enough time, this limitation should change.)

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Please don’t take this as a personal attack, but for those that are virulently supporting the move to the browser based Free, why continually assault the users of the free Make with insults? Trimble offered it for free, users took them up on their offer. This condescending attitude is not helpful if your intent is to persuade people to your way of thinking. It’s apparent from the replies on this thread that the vast majority of Pro users are just crossing their fingers that the Pro version doesn’t end up web-based also. So I think comments like “loosing (sic) the ranting freebies/hobbyists for professionals appraising the assets of SUP and willing to pay for them appears to be the right move,” may be a little off the mark.

Just because many, many people have used SU Make for years free of charge, doesn’t equate to them not being grateful for the privilege. Look at the number of Make users who have created accounts here just to be able to tell Trimble they would be glad to pay for the privilege of using a stable desktop version, even though they are only hobbyists. I am one of those myself. Many like myself were willing to pay for books, online courses, and interactive pdf’s, in order to better utilize the features of SU Make, even though we will never see a dime of profit from its use. I would gladly pay a reasonable fee for SU Make, it is helpful for my woodworking hobby in many ways, and it is just plain fun to use!

That being said I’m retired and I can’t afford SU Pro. And web based is not an option for me. I have the highest speed internet service available in my rural area, and it still wouldn’t support online CAD, it doesn’t even support most videos well. Even if it did I don’t have internet available in my shop, where I use SU Make. Web based software of any kind is simply out of the question for those like me.

Don’t be too quick to make sweeping generalizations about SU Make users as “ranting freebies/hobbyists.” Many of us love SU and have talked many others into using it as well. We would just like the ability to use it well into the future, and appreciate the opportunity to respectfully let the makers of the product know our concerns.

I hope that didn’t come off as too negative. I hope this will be in some way profitable to this discussion.

I think the big disconnect is that John and others on the team are, “bullish on browser/cloud software,” and the majority of your users are apparently not. It is certainly true in my case. I understand John, that you work in this industry and probably don’t personally interact with many people like me who don’t have great internet connections everywhere they go. But for many who don’t live in or near big cities fast, or even reasonable, internet connections are a pipe dream. You have already replaced the majority of your desktop applications with web applications, GSuite, etc. This isn’t even a remote consideration for me. You say, “The ability to open any computer in the world, log into a web service and instantly have access to all of my data is, well… just very powerful.” But I don’t use many computers to run SU for a business. I use SU on a laptop that runs SU very well in my shop without any internet connection. I can only assume from the replies on this thread that many others don’t have the need to run SU on multiple computers.

I’m certainly not opposed to the idea of a web based SU, just not at the expense of no longer supporting some form of SU Make, which again, I would be willing to pay for. But no matter how well you are able to develop the browser based SU Free version, it just won’t be an option for many.

I know I can keep using SU Make…for now. But it won’t be further supported. And the concern for many of your Pro users is that SU Pro is bound for the web also. I hope you reconsider this plan moving forward and continue to develop and improve SU Make.

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We were using SketchUp Make 2017 and Thea Render with out students.
I guess this is then the version we will remain using.

SketchUp Web is an interesting idea for starters but we all know that SketchUp desktop already has issues with larger files/designs thus I see the Web version not likely to be very useful for architecture / interior design.

Web based technology still has drastic performance issues vs native applications.

This move by Timble just confirms our plan to fully move to more mature applications such as Revit which the students can get for free while they are students.

Plus with Fusion 360 which we employ too students have much more mature design tools than what SketchUp still only offers.

Things change - time to move on.

Simple fact: web-based programs cease to function without access to the web. Then what? The web is NOT 100% reliable, not yet, and probably won’t be. Too many physical problems, too many nodes, too many users who don’t fully understand or just hit the wrong button. How about what just happened in Hawaii? Please keep my programs off the web, or at least, let me download authorized versions to my machine!

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You can still download authorized versions to your machine.

It is good to widen your horizon and get acquainted with other software, it is not unlikely, though, that your students occasionally ‘fall back’ to the basic design tool SketchUp is. Learning to deal with a drawing program which is bound to evolve in a ‘robotic’ drawing machine will let them see the need for ‘humane’ aspects in their designs.
It usually starts with a simple block…
https://www.masterclass.com/classes/frank-gehry-teaches-design-and-architecture#/video?id=aszkctragt&status=available&player=wistia

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You gotta be kidding. You really think Trimble would sink this huge amount of dev resources, time and money to just create a free browser based system for the kiddies? Open your eyes.

It’s more than clear, if undeterred, Trimble plans on making SUPro a pay-as-you-go online subscrtiption model.

My thinking is that Trimble, not being any sort of tech company, is letting it’s developers talk them into creating a cloud platform. In fact if real marketing people were involved, don’t you think they would have focus grouped or test marketed such a huge move as this?

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OnShape, with it’s $80,000,000 dollars of investment to build a professional CAD platform, benefits from the cloud in a much different way than SU. First off, it’s primary customers are CAD professionals, each with up-to-date computer configurations and a stable and powerful internet. Most users are involved with some sort of enterprise IT management to install and keep them updated with the latest browser and OS fixes.

Furthermore, one of OnShape platform’s biggest draw is it’s collaborative modeling experience. Versioning, bill of materials and other cloud-based teamwork features are touted to give OnShape advantages over competitors.

Lastly, CAD modelers can be very effective as cloud apps as they are very compute intensive and cloud based distributed processing can help generate complex booleans and shelling operations, parametric calculations and FEA in a fraction of the time it takes on a regular computer.

Unfortunately, your cloud platform has none of these needs. Your FREE customers are not substantially a group of professionals with robust equipment, software and internet connections. There is little collaboration toolsets provided or needed (do you even have a use case for Free?). And, there are few if any computationally heavy tasks that can be aided by cloud based scales of computational power.

You’ll need to find a better example if you want to convince me this move to the cloud has any real value other than padding developers resumes.

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Brilliant post. :grinning:

Really? Most understand Make 2017 is still available. But, it’s a dead product. What happens if Apple or Windows create an update it doesn’t work with? Trimble has stated there will be no more updates.

Do those with hundreds of hours of time invested in learning SU over the years switch to a hobbled web version overnight-- or do they have to shell out $700 to finish the dollhouse design for their daughter?

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I have opened my eyes, Chipp. No one from Trimble has said anything about Pro becoming a cloud based application. There seem to be a few people, you included, who have decided that they are. All I wrote was that it hasn’t come from Trimble.

Most users of non-Pro SketchUp are using versions that are older than SU2017. Many are still using SU8 and I know of some using earlier versions. They haven’t been affected by changes made by Apple and Microsoft. There’s no reason to think that’s going to suddenly change.

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