Been some time now since Trimble adopted SketchUp and I wonder what the parent’s influence has been. I’d always viewed SketchUp as a bright, fresh take on digital drawing and found it so much easier to delve into. Who knows, getting into traditional CAD could have been just as much work, but with Sketchup the journey has been enjoyable. As opposed to never having the patience to master CAD. So when a traditional player came along and swooped up SketchUp I was a little concerned. It’d be interesting to see the stats on how the progression / complaints / improvements have gone since the ownership change.
I can’t shake the thought that SketchUp should still be in the hands of those not involved with the traditional CAD world, and perhaps maybe out there by themselves. Just can’t stop thinking that the new brave approach to digital drawing is now being boxed in to the traditional mould.
Am I alone out here?
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Well I had high hopes for Meta when they announced their metaverse, but now it has hit the fan, not so much. 
problem imo is, if SU were to be bought by an existing CAD company, it would slowly become… an annex of the CAD software in question.
I don’t see Trimble as a traditional CAD business. I am not aware that they have any CAD tools. They have Tekla that is a structural design BIM application, that they also acquired some time before SketchUP. They are also very much a hardware company, making measuring instruments.
If SketchUp had remained with Google, it would have been killed by now, after they realized that people wouldn’t build a 3D model of the world for Google Earth for free, and fast enough.
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