additionally, there is lots of training for free available from here.
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There’s a new alert on 3D Warehouse that a click on “Learn More” should guide you to https://learn.sketchup.com/ as well.
When I see that a company like mind.sight.studios can develop something similar I have a hard time believing that a company the size of Trimble can’t implement something. Any perpetual license customer that deals with Autodesk and Adobe knows what’s going on here. I have no choice with Autodesk since the industry demands we use it. The user outcry in my company over potential Adobe replacements saved it. There is no such demand in my office for SketchUp. NONE of the Architects want to use it and about half of the LA’s would rather use something else. SU fits our workflow less and less each year and when there finally is something we could leverage you lock ‘classic’ users out. You are carving your own tombstone with this stuff.
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As an example, what are the architects in your office using instead of SketchUp for various tasks?
Autocad, Revit for starters although I weened them off of it for Sketchup and Vray oh and Thea, fantastic renderer as well. I then brought in Draftsight for some Autocad docs that we wanted to maintain in that format. Highly recommend Draftsight.
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Revit here. They prefer it even for conceptual design.
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The answer here is really complex. I really can’t comment further on the technical aspects or discuss the value of such an offering. I think the biggest reason we decided not to go that route is that offering would represent a very complex “3rd choice” for our existing users. It’s hard enough to communicate the differences between Classic+M&S vs Subscriptions. Adding a “Hybrid” option makes it super hard for customers to compare them. It also turns out there’s a fairly simple non-technical solution: Give existing M&S customers a discount if they want to move over to a subscription.
Connect is a project management tool where you can share files, track tasks (called To Dos) between team members and collaborate using a bunch of different 3D, 2D and text documents. We’re working on better learning materials but I’m not sure when they will be available.
If you can’t cancel your Connect subscription, you may not be the account owner. Meaning someone else bought it then assigned a seat to you. Let me know if you can’t sort this out. DM me your trimble id email and I can have some see exactly what is going on.
Sorry about this! I’ll send you a direct message. We should be able to help you out especially if you are up for M&S renewal very soon.
I interpreted @eneroth3’s suggestion of re-using the subscription system “under the hood” to mean that end users would not be aware that a common service was being used for multiple kinds of SketchUp license scenarios. No new offerings, no third choice. Just have Trimble capitalize on one underlying service technology to implement both the user-visible new subscription license, and the classic Maintenance & Support license. A common technology might need enhancement to support both use cases, but (speaking as a professional software developer) that enhancement would be much less than supporting two independent systems, and might offer a compelling enough business justification in customer satisfaction etc. to pay for it.
Some users (including me) have no intention of ever utilizing a subscription service, so that discount would likely not be interesting.
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Unfortunately i don’t have a date yet. Anyone who is up for M&S renewal right now should call a sales rep to discuss what we can do today.
Very strange thing, eh. I also understood it the way you did. I don’t know how the scenario of a 3rd choice could have been inferred, but that’s just me being daft I suppose.
- 1, actually + 1 million %
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+1 me too
I didn’t read it as ambiguous.
You said it better than I could!
I interpreted it as “Give M&S customers all the additional features of subscriptions while M&S is active”. Sorry If i was mistaken about that. This whole conversation started with a question about why Large Area Import was only available to subscribers. Am I missing something?
Yes. You (Trimble, not you individually) have been skirting around the issue of preferring subscription over Classic licence users. Which has led Classic users the say “WTF”? We have supported (and funded) the development of new features that we are now being locked out of!
Trimble has claimed (in this case) that it’s a licensing issue which prevents offering the Large Area feature to Classic users — when, in fact it’s more likely driven by a marketing decision to try and make the subscription more attractive to Pro users than a classic license.
If you really wanted to make the feature available to current M&S users, the technical issue could be easily solved(as Eneroth3 has suggested).
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Agreed, this is easy to see in Tremble’s other products. Nothing new here and should come to no one’s surprise.
Maybe “easily” is a bit of an exaggeration. I don’t know what technical issues there are with the current systems or how they could and should interconnect. Reusing the subscription engine under the hood for non-subscription users might be a very elegant way to handle them/us, but might also not be allowed by how the system is designed.
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You’re right. I should have omitted that adjective, as it is unknown how simple it would be.
My larger point remains though: if they had really wanted to enable these features for M&S subscribers, there are available solutions for doing so — and that this suggests something about their likely long-term intentions for continued Classic license availability.
My view is (and it is only speculation) that they have already decided to sunset Classic licenses. The feature differentiation between Pro license classes is an attempt to nudge as many Classic users over as possible — carrot before stick — before eventually ending that option.
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Sorry I’m confused…a bit late to the party it seems.
I have a 15 Sketchup Pro licenses for my team and I pay an annual fee, as described in:
Maintenance and Support Subscription
I really do want the high quality aerial and terrain on a large scale. So I’m on the wrong plan??
@Bryceosaurus
What is this “subscription” model , and how do I find out about that? I purchase through a re-seller but they didn’t tell me anything about new plans or how they would impact on current SU features. My Maintenance schedule came up 2 months ago…poor timing ?.