Sketchup 2023 update is a big disappointment

And I bet it’s the flip along function that now has a dedicated tool…

That’s what I think too. It should be noted that the old “Flip along…” functions are still available for creating keyboard shortcuts.

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After several updates Sketchup 2023 (windows 11) still is extremely buggy. Black trays and switching and updating scenes causes bugsplats instantly. I’m working with SU since 2003 and never had such a buggy new version before…And no response or whatsoever from SU / Trimble. :frowning:

@maythesong is referring to this.

You were told already that it was a shortcut you had on 2022 version and you can do it again on the 2023 version, this right click isn’t a function that is installed with sketchup by default. Also if sketchup was installed correctly all your shortcuts should’ve been added to the new version.

To summarize also my request. There are only two things I want SketchUp Layout to add.

  1. Please Make a Dark UI theme.
  2. Please make Layout Vector based like AutoCAD, somehow it will lessen the lag.

Thank you.

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And vector file imports (svg, wmf, vector PDFs, eps, etc) Trimble is a BIG company and can afford to pay for the rights to use these file types (svg is open source?).

yeah, if only Trimble was working on an in-house drawing tool to serve as an interface with its softwares

Well I guess I’ll never see the day.

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I’m content with using su 2022. Cause su2023 has been an utter waste of time. Crashes constantly on simplest of tasks (shadow work).

Started doing the bulk of my design work in blender because there’s no constraints and so many more benefits. Archipak +bosm+uvs+a Boolean tool that is super powered+ sculpting on demand+ no subscription+ rendering + modelling to scale + etc.

Well just wait, a Subscription price increase is coming in July :wink:

Except that there is currently NO way to produce working drawing sheets in Blender. Well, not yet.

I don’t think blender will add this feature, blender isn’t an architecture software, you can model, render, make animations a more bit making architecture documentation isn’t and won’t be I their plans.

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Home Builder add on has it but not out of development yet or it’s dead. So true it’s not here till it’s here

BlenderBim is making a lot of improvements. Ot could be possible.

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I do agree, the situation is basically repeated each year. The subscription fees going up, but there is not real reward for professional. I am in Sketchup from 2009 and I have payed for it from that time. That is a quite lot of money, however, since that time nobody really heard the community voice call for massive change in Layout to make it really dependable software for building documentation purpose. The software should be more comfortable, quick, user friendly. I would like to mention Adobe Illustrator as an UI standard. I used to use a CadTools plugin for Illustrator a time ago and it is actually much easier to use than Layout whit much better results, however it is not meant to be created for pro use. So I mean there is a many source of inspiration, from how the UI of Layout should looks and works to how quick and effective it could be.
We all need to follow a national building documentation norms and standards (which vary from country to country), but such a crucial thing like a line style was added to Sketchup just in 2020?! Why a had to rely on Skalp Sketchup plugin to create something useful? Why Layout doesnt support correctly the Excel import? Why dimensioning in Layout is such a pain? The overall ownership cost of Sketchup is a sum of all necessary plugin to work effectively and it is not only that money spent for subscription. I can briefly say the real costs of subscription is at least about 600€ when it counts all additional plugins. So I just wonder what will be Trimble answer to that persistent problem of missing functionality in Sketchup ecosystem.

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Even with all of our gripes and complaints SketchUp is a great program, I think we call all agree to that, if it wasn’t we wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t care. We just want to see advancement and improvement of the product, make what is great even greater and help us out with the deficiencies.

When the web based version of SketchUp came out and then Ipad version it was shiny and new and I thought, “Wow this is cool”, but after some reflection I realized that I would probably never actually use either for any real work since both do not allow SketchUp extensions. For me they are little more than handy “viewer” apps, great for showing off a model to clients or to someone out in the field.

It would seem to me that the real revenue to be made is from the sale of SketchUp PRO to design professionals, specifically architectural design and interior design professionals. With that being said one would think that the performance of the desktop version of SketchUp coupled with Layout would be of paramount importance. My wish is that SketchUp and Trimble would focus more on the core apps and spend less time and resources on the “toys”. Toys are nice but real work is done with the “tools”. I have never been able to do any real design work on an Ipad, it’s never going to happen, not unless I can set it up on my desk, hook up a real keyboard and mouse and somehow figure out how to cast the output onto my 4K monitor. Even then, without extensions I really can’t do a whole lot with it.

If SketchUp and Layout were somehow brought to a slightly higher level of performance and functionality I have no doubt in my mind that they would quickly dominate the residential design market and edge out all of the competition.

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For me the biggest disappointment is still the lack of communication from the developers about the future plans, releases and bug fixes.

For example obviously there is something being upgraded on the UI side of SU2023 which brought many bugs in how UI and panels behave. If only team gave us heads up that they are upgrading the UI, why they did it and how will this benefit the future releases it would be easier to understand. But without any info we are just left frustrated when panels don’t work anymore how we were used to, don’t update properly, and we have no idea if is going to get fixed this month, this year or ever… This just makes it so much more frustrating since now we are paying yearly subscription for a software that is so broken that it’s almost impossible to use in production.

I had to roll back to 2022 for my colleagues since there were so many issues with 2023 that seriously impeded our work. :roll_eyes::unamused:

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I don’t think it’s that broken, it’s true that it has some bugs that according to many other threads are either fixed or are being worked on, personally I haven’t experienced most of the bugs I’ve seen that some people have, I think that the workflow influences the “activation” of some bugs.

I agree totally with you that Trimble should be more transparent and leave some senseless secrecy with the development of sketchup, a great example of how it should be is twinmotion, they have a public roadmap and also a feature request directly in their website, I don’t know if they even check all the requests from people who leave one, maybe not, but it makes the user feel that is being heard and confident that improvements or fixes are coming in the future.

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Getting to this point is often a slow, frustrating, and laborious experience, especially if you’re learning on your own or have a bad teacher.

Easy to start, difficult to master.

Pros with 10+years of experience are still finding little tricks and quirks that make sketchup more useable and faster.

SketchUp is simple and seldom adds new toolsets. It relies on extensions which are “community-based” and therefore require a decent amount of “trial and error” to learn and integrate.

When it comes to Extensions, SketchUp is an endless learning curve.
I think, to be a great Sketchupper, you have to be the sort of person who WANTS to keep learning.
You have to explore new extensions, watch videos, experiment and develop new workflows.

A student or a sole trader/small firm professional has that freedom…not so much when you are provided with workload & deadlines not of your choosing.

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Exactly! And why aren’t they??? It’s the plugin and extension developers that have made SketchUp so great, and so usable in so many fields - we all love the basic SketchUp, and we all add extensions and plugins to suit our needs.

So why not allow the same to happen to Layout?!

Trimble would then be able to carry on just (eventually) attending to bugs, the occasional interface tweak, no big expenditure, and we’d all be happy… and wouldn’t be discussing all the other app possibilities

It just makes no sense to me why they are not allowing this.

After using SketchUp for more than 17 years (I’m guessing), as soon as FormZ and PowerCadd finish their product alignment (if that ever happens), I’ll likely be abandoning SU and Layout, along with thousands of others…

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