How to preserve Sketchup creations & keep them viewable indefinitely?

What you’re discussing is actually a more critical issue than it seems to be on the surface. How do we preserve any of our now-digital information world into the future? Heck, I just gave some old 78rpm records from my childhood (late 40s early 50s) since my granddaughter wants to buy a turntable and now she’ll need to find one that plays 78s. Early peoples placed their histories and stories on stone and we’ve been able to find it and translate it. What’s a future society going to make of a 1 cm square of etched silicone? How will they power it, read it and interpret it? Even data on a floppy disk is basically unreadable unless you have an “ancient” PC laying around. The US Patent Office maintains physical drawings. What do they do today with modern input that may be digital? We need to preserve the media AND the machines and mechanisms that will be able to read it. And with the way software companies come and go, I wouldn’t bet on Trimble being around in 50 years.

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I personally would be exporting IFC, even if you do not attribute the IFC components the geometry will open in almost all current CAD software packages and due to IFC playing a big part in BIM I doubt it will be phased out, yet you can download plenty of free IFC viewers and save them in the file. It would be great if Sketchup would finish the IFC exporter properly though, especially IFCwindow @TheOnlyAaron . :slight_smile:

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