I am a long time Sketchup user. I upgraded to Sketchup Pro with version 8 (the paying version) only to find out that further upgrades will cost $149. I have an older MacBook (2007) which works fine, but to upgrade to the latest version of Sketchup I would have to buy a new computer so that I can get the latest OSX. I am not going to do that, so I slug along with version 8, which for my purposes is just fine.
And today I find that the 3D warehouse is now out of my reach. What is up with that? So here I am, fully invested in Sketchup, and you people have in essence turned your back on me. How dissapointing…
I suggest that the OP consider downloading a later version of SU Make, if that can work with his or her OS.
If the OP’s assertion is correct, this is not only unfortunate, but it appears to be unfair to a significant portion of the SU customer base. The ability to directly import models found in EW is an integral feature of the SketchUp workflow. This should not be abandoned for any of the previous versions of the software, IMO.
When it comes to EW and 3DW working, it is more about the OEM embedded browser control objects. These programming objects are installed with the full blown browser application. (MSIE and Safari)
On older versions of Operating Systems the newer versions of these browsers are not supported.
The functionality of the SketchUp web interfaces need to move on to support WebGL and HTML5, etc.
This also includes Google Earth with respect to the Set Geo-Location feature. It is Google that dropped support for older Safari versions.
There are manual workarounds. Set the Geo-Location manually. Import a terrain grab from a thumbdrive you downloaded on a newer computer. Use a different browser (Chrome) to manually download extension RBZ archives and manually install them with the button on the “Extensions” panel of the “Preferences” dialog.
Supporting 5 previous version is just not feasible. When the OEM (Trimble in this case,) says they are dropping support for v8 and v2013, don’t be surprised that the do what they say.
To the OP, I suggest calling SketchUp customer support, and see if your machine can run SU2014 Pro. You’ll at least be running Ruby 2.0 under SketchUp (with the Ruby standard library.) There are also some fixes that might allow you to use the EW & 3DW from within SketchUp again.
Let’s address these each one at a time, since I’m involved with most of these (ex-Apple, long time SketchUp). I’m not arguing, just pointing some things out that you might have missed:
upgrades $149: I’m not in sales, can’t help here. Engineers want their work to be free and to have everyone on the planet us it.
MacBook 2007: my daughter has this laptop, and can only run SU8 because it only runs Snow Leopard. Gotta say, this is par for the course at Apple, and on the iPhone they do waaaay better than Google on Android (read this as: if you think Apple is bad in this respect, Google is even worse). Your machine probably came with Tiger on it… and you’ve probably upgraded to Leopard, then Snow Leopard. Do you know a lot of PC’s that have gone through more than 3 OS upgrades? And to run SketchUp 2015 you need Lion, and even with Lion we’re supporting 4 OS’s (Lion, Mtn Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite). That’s crazy, in QA world. So I don’t think it’s too far out of line with industry standards. I don’t like it necessarily, but VirtualBox runs NeXTSTEP 4.2 a hundred times better than my NeXT Cube, and I call that progress.
I would have to buy a new computer: no, you’d have to buy a used computer that runs only one more version newer of OS than your 8 year old hardware runs. You’re fine on 8, that’s good, and for my daughter’s design work, it’s fine for now as well.
Today I find out that 3DWarehouse is out of my reach: define “out of my reach”? For 3 years, you’ve been sending requests to 3dwarehouse which have gone to ANOTHER COMPANY called Google, and contractually they were required to forward eeeeee-every one of those request to us. Not many companies get Google to forward requests to them. I’m not aware of another one the planet. This costs Google real $'s and people to keep this up and running, and anytime it went down, we knew who to call and where they lived, because they used to be our co-workers. That was exceptionally nice of Google. Now that time has run out. You do have more options. See Understanding the June 1, 2015 changes that affect SketchUp 2013 and SketchUp 8 | SketchUp Help and note that you don’t like Option 1, so Option 2 – Use an Internet browser, or (even better for you) Option 3 – Modify your SketchUp preferences file (which leads you to Resolving issues related to June 1, 2015 changes that affect SketchUp Pro 2013 and SketchUp Pro 8 | SketchUp Help) so you can continue to use 3dwarehouse. I think you’ll like that option.
Let me know if that helps, my front is still between you and my back, and you should only be disappointed about is your spelling of the word dissapointing (sic) unless of course you were really trying to “diss” us, and for goodness sakes, please excuse my poor attempts at humor.
Many thanks for your replies. Barry, don’t quit your day job. English is not my first language, and dissapointment and its evil friends (two s’s and one p, or is it two p’s and one s) always cause me trouble.
I paid $400 or so dollars for Sketchup Pro (v. 8). Is there a reasonable expectations that Sketchup and the 3D Warehouse to continue to work? I think yes. Would I pay something for an upgrade? I would consider it, but $150 is a pretty hefty sum for something I already paid a hefty sum for.
My Macbook works just fine, and a used computer (may as well be new for the prices they want) just to be able to use Sketchup is a bit of a reach. The computer has Mountain Lion and is as far as I can take that without a new (or used) computer. The new version of Sketchup will not even download because it appears to be incompatible with Mountain Lion.
Out of reach means I can not open the 3D warehouse. From inside Sketchup, I do a search and get nothing. Go directly to the 3D Warehouse and get the Good News, Bad News box. Really? Just like that? No notice, no warnings, no work arounds?
Fortunately for me, I downloaded Sketchup 2014 at some point (due to file format changes in more recent versions) and I have confirmed that it will work with the new 3D Warehouse. I will try the other steps today…
Planned obsolescence seems to have made it into the software business, and I shall be careful in the future with what I buy.
This wasn’t planned - as Barry described - SU8 was a Google product, tied to Google services and Google servers. This is a result of the product changing owners and the inevitable side effect from the services having to move.
Don’t you consider Option 3 an acceptable workaround? One that restores the warehouse functionality in SU8?
No worries about the English: my best friend in 2nd grade had grown up in Germany, and while really smart, his spelling was not good, because they don’t have spelling bees in Germany. You know English is bad when they have to have spelling bees for all the silly words we have. Your English is better than my Spanish, Italian or Russian, as I learned at a recent choir rehearsal.
Yes, 2014 or Option 3. Our goal was only to not make users deal with configuration files, not to lock them out. Back to my day job.
I did do Option 3 after I wrote the reply… well done. That is the work around I was looking for.
Not to criticize, but rather in the interest of a constructive criticism… I get emails from Trimble about recent discussions in the forum. Why not send an email to registered users of old versions of Sketchup informing them of fundamental changes in the application? This would prevent the panic and knee jerk reactions that show the world I dont know how to spell dissapoint…
We would end up in spam filters, and we really work hard at not spamming people. We’ve been putting warnings in the welcome panel and every panel that was going to be affected. It’s hard to find that right balance on the spam-information continuum.
If I am not mistaken, a notice and warning about the this warehouse change was posted on this forum on April 20th and was pinned to the top of the forum for everyone to see who logged in. Also the notice appeared every time I accessed the warehouse prior to June 1. Did that not happen for you>
When I am having issues with 3D Warehouse, I Google Sketchup, and us their displayed link for 3D warehouse. You can even make a hot key/short cut. I have found the search results to be better, at times, than reaching 3DW through the program. You do need to download to your desktop, and then open the file(s).
