New SketchUp Pricing Model...?

Do You? I mean, use everything the Adobe subscription comprises?

Actually @trampy, it hasn’t ever been clear to me from reading your contributions over the years whether you use SketchUp or not.

If you do, is it for professional use or personal use. If it’s personal use, what’s the purpose of your contributions on this forum in respect of the cost of SketchUp Pro?

To make an analogy… in the words of a %@$&*! small minded UK ruling party MP, “if you don’t love the flag, or the Queen, then move to another country”…

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I think the reality of modern software development on devices that are entirely fluid; there is constant work needing to be done to keep things running. That’s before we even consider the cost of providing the servers and bandwidth (for free) that run 3Dwarehouse etc.

Windows/Mac OS introduces new features that breaks something else

  • Development work needs to be done to correct this
  • Human has to answer the phones/emails more to deal with user support.

Windows/Mac OS turns off/depreciate a function that your software relies on

  • Development work needs to be done to correct this
  • Human has to answer the phones/emails more to deal with user support.

Graphics card manufacturer changes something that changes something:

  • Development work needs to be done to correct this
  • Human has to answer the phones/emails more to deal with user support.

etc etc
Likewise there are users who have jumped straight into new Mac Processor Architecture, they want software that will essentially need to be built from scratch to function on this new type of computer. This doesn’t happen by itself.

This happens everywhere, I have bought smaller apps, games, pieces of software where I’ve paid once and they stop working because Apple/Windows change the OS on my phone/PC and breaks it, yet the developer has moved on because there is a cost associated with that and I now have something I do “own” which no longer functions - unless I’m prepared to keep a device frozen in time free of changes. I guess this is ultimately the only expectation that I can have for a “owned” purchase, that it will work as long as I change nothing.

So what do you do? Build-in more cost to the product to allow for a longer time where things might go wrong? But then the price of the product becomes inaccessible, which is super common with “Pro” software.

I never used to be able to justify that huge upfront cost of just purchasing Photoshop, but now I can have it on a subscription. Ultimately I receive my income on a subscription, so it makes sense for many of my outgoings to be managed in the same way. I appreciate that others won’t share the same opnion.

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I tend to think it’s pretty clever to sell Blender, we might wanna try that as well.

:thinking:
What version exactly?

NINTENDO

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Yes, well most, except web. But the point is I like Affinity for what it does and I do “own” it (vs rent). Adobe’s dominance, like Microsoft’s gives it too much power. I rent Adobe because I need to for my work. When I don’t, I stop. I’m still pissed they bought Aldus Freehand and killed it.

Trimble doesn’t wield as much power except that SketchUp was so ubiquitous, Trimble can ride that wave without innovating much, without fixing some problems that have been around too long, while reducing capabilities on the free side, and still charge more for pro.

I’m not sure why anyone here argues about this. The model worked well before, and sadly Trimble bought it and decided to change the model. I’m advocating for a better $ model, from a user’s perspective.

SketchUp online is painful. Why bother?
Why resist the model of paying and keeping and upgrading when it’s worth upgrading?

We all know landlords that don’t care enough to significantly improve property. Called Slum Lords in America. Trimble is the Landlord of SketchUp, but it’s just software. Easy to own and sell. Little overhead to just keep.

Blender working in M1 is all down to Apple doing a really solid (but not perfect) job of helping software to run. We’ve seen other companies try and fail to migrate from one processor architecture to another, but the software uptake has been so low, that it has killed the device. So Apple have done a great job of smoothing over this (whilst not informing less technical people of some of the risks of buying a new machine)
As far as I am aware Blender has not recompiled it for ARM64 and redesigned the viewport and rendering engines to support Metal.
In that case you are lucky.

The reason it works so well is that most of the software we are talking about here is heavily single-threaded and chip manufacturers have spent the last 15 years adding more cores and more threads, something which is hard to make work in many situations. So we haven’t felt as big benefits to things outside of CPU based rendering and easily multithreaded tasks such as video encoding.

For other software, you will not be so lucky, For example, if said software previously had access to an X86 compiled part of the OS (let’s say there is an API that allows for PDFs to be read and written by a program) and this X86 part of the OS no longer exists in the ARM64 version of the OS and Rosetta doesn’t facilitate this, then you are going to run into issues.

We went through exactly the same thing 15 years ago as when we moved from X86 to X64, you’d get all kinds of anomalies happening when the software was relying on emulation. This will be happening now too, as you just described with SketchUp.
The same thing is happening over on the Microsoft devices using ARM processors and where they are are running clever software to try and keep things working.

Remember, Apple were due to disable OpenGL within Big Sur (for all devices) but bottled it thank goodness.

The most boring thread ever, since the earlier about the same subject where all this has already been repeated tens of times. Why call “new” a policy that has been in place for almost a year already…

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You want a free version of SketchUp, with limited functionality, that you can still use for commercial work?

You’re still asking for a pricing model that Trimble just replaced, as if it were novel or new. This has been discussed for a solid year or more. And you still don’t give a good reason for this beyond the vague concept that you simply don’t think it’s worth the price (even though it clearly isn’t really a burden if you use it professionally).

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It’s ok if this is boring to you, but then why be here to complain? I don’t join a knitting circle to complain about knitting.

I’m proposing a “new” price model, to replace what was implemented.

My basic suggestion is to offer a model where incentives are balanced and reflect what I see as the utility and ideal of SketchUp. Not everyone is a “Pro” but most still want to use the historically more affordable and useful versions of SketchUp.

The model says, we’ve paid for the development, some of us for years, since @last days. We are happy to pay for upgrades when they are worth the upgrades. The model offers reasons to keep innovating and when they do, users will pay again. If they don’t want to innovate then stop renting. A modest maintenance fee is reasonable if folks want modest maintenance.

I’m not really sure you are. Aren’t you just proposing they bring back the Classic license, but at a lower price than before, and with regular updates? I don’t see why you’re comparing a note-taking app price structure and comparing it to professional software still.

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I think it’s comparing Apples to Oranges, they are derived from different technologies with different focuses for where they are used, underlying architectural decisions for each piece of software will have been made long ago to support the intended purpose of the software.
SketchUp for example uses double-precision floating-point values (which places different strains on hardware) because it needs to maintain sub-mm accuracy across models that might be covering a distance of 10 square miles.

Blender however amongst other things has lots of rendering functionality which is much more suited to being calculated on a GPU. Can of worms possibly opening: but Blender isn’t really a CAD program, it’s an art tool, as photoshop is. That is not a slight on Blender at all.
Ultimately, whilst they can both make 3D shapes, I think they are intended for different purposes, even if there some overlap between users.

Looking at wireframe models is typically a single-threaded task, there will be parts of what you are doing in a typical CAD package that might be using a little multithreading or using multiple cores (physics simulations for example), but the bulk of it is not.

It’s less about how it’s compiled as to how it performs, but because the actual types of tasks being performed don’t need multiple cores.

The M1 processor is performing well right now because it’s so good at single-threaded tasks, even behind rosetta. Currently Apple’s Rosetta costs something like 20% of the theoretical performance of the processor by having to translate X86 to ARM. So the improvement that will come from programs being recompiled for ARM64 will come from not having to waste energy translating.

I don’t think this is a trivial task, ultimately it depends on just how many different parts of the OpenGL API SketchUp (or any program) actually uses - most of the CAD packages don’t rely too much on the GPU for that core wireframe viewing. This is just as well really, as the GPU in the M1 Processor is left in the dust by other vendors (which in turn makes it a poor choice for Blender)

it’s like a badge of honour…

That’s great but how to present that Blender/Archipack model as 2D plans - that’s the big problem…

You have overlooked the point as was trying to make about the precision and the useage cases being entirely different.
You might be able to get tools that produce forms in a way similar to other cad products, but those double floating point based CAD products are numerically around 4289940465 times more precise.
it’s not a case of one thing being better than one or another, they are designed for different purposes and therefore have their own pros and cons depending on your intention for them.
It might be good enough for you, but for other people working in on different projects in other industries, it simply wouldn’t be good enough.

Eevee is not really a stress test of any sort, certainly not for instanced Susan heads. I bet 10000 Susan heads look funny though, you should record it and stick it on YouTube!

However go and look at the benchmarks for real-time rendering , you’ll see that other types of devices of a similar price will outperform the M1 in this case. It’s still a discrete GPU along the lines of the Intel ones that were in them before - it will always be outperformed by other devices. That’s excluding the hardware capabilities that Apple currently has no hardware provision for, such as neural network based image reconstruction/demonising and real time Ray/Path tracing.

It’s all good though, it’s great to see any tech that takes a leap forward.

In vietnam a typical recent university graduate earns $200-$500/month… just checked on the internet… $69.72c/mth for Creative Suite… $27.62/m for each of Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign… not many can afford to be legal at those prices… Affinity… all three core equivelent products can be bought for $75… permanent license…

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I feel the pain, but when you are employed the employer is supposed to provide the tools.
I work for an international company, and the main tools are the same regardless of country. I understand they operate in Vietnam too.

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Employers generally do… but local consultants are in the same boat… their costs and profit margins are also similarly lower so the cost pressures apply to them too… International consultants generally comply with software licensing… because the are audited in the home countries…

That is very interesting, and unfortunate. I don’t think this is an argument to change the price structure of the software for the whole world though. If anything Trimble might consider selling it cheaper in certain countries based on the economic climate, but that’s it.

Of course Trimble. should adjust prices based on the local economy, whether a company buys the app or not. Something about lifting all boats.