I keep saying this and I’ll say it again, stop wasting time, energy and money on the free (web based) version of SketchUp (that also includes SketchUp for the Ipad) and instead invest all that energy into making Layout a more capable and robust product. Let’s seal the deal and make SketchUp the industry leading architectural software it was meant to be.
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I’ve quit griping on the forum about SketchUp and their development habits.
Over the last 15 years, how many major releases had you excited? OK, perhaps I’m aiming a little high. Over the last 15 years how many major releases had new features actually useful to professionals? It seems to be a trend forming of taking functions, already catered for by 3rd party developers due to the lack thereof in the parent software, and develop something similar and integrating it (thus putting the 3rd party developer out of pocket).
The sooner you realise that the development team only follow their own agenda, no matter how much they protest to the contrary, the better for you. They have different goals they want to meet, developing for platforms that will keep them chasing their tails in the future. Set up your workflow, figure out what you do and need to accomplish that goal within the ecosystem.
Unfortunately most people are now locked into the subscription system, and still not getting the pro updates one would expect (and allured to when selling the subscription system for adoption by the public), thereby guaranteeing their revenue stream (within attrition / growth norms) without the need to truly innovate and develop.
SketchUp by itself is rather capable, especially so with the plethora of plugins / extensions available. What the software needs is for Layout to receive a lot of love. Ideally it should be a single install executable, not a separate software. Something in the spirit of persona’s between which you switch, as Affinity has.
Just my thoughts on this, it hasn’t changed in years. I dare them to try though.
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I totally agree, SketchUp as it currently stands is pretty decent. Now we just need a little TLC applied to Layout.
I know, I sound like a broken record already.
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They don’t dare to grow, they want to live in the save zone by love of old people.
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We´ll just have to keep pushing. I do believe the teams are talented and hardworking.
The work on the iPad version I believe was their way of dipping their toes into the apple silicon thing, which they eventually had to to anyway. But I do hope they are done with this now, and ready to move on.
Sketchup for web - I dont know what that was for.
We got one minor improvement to the Layout workflow now that the gizmo as a rotate tool actually works. I want the arc tool to actually work, and for inferencing in Layout to actually work. I want basic 2D drawing operations in Layout to actually work. So more pushing … 
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Well, here we are in 2023 and in the AEC world we are expected to all be adopting BIM workflows, even for smaller projects.
For the past few years we have been able to muddle through, largely thanks to kind plugin writers, but I for one was expecting to at last see some major updates in terms of the SU ifc handling.
What a disappointment; not only does the native export function still mess up the hierarchy, but on installation of 2023 the lovely bt_IFCmanager extension stopped working !
And what about easily adding PSets ?? Nada !
Given what is being proposed for in terms of Level Of Information Needs in the upcoming European Norm EN 17412-2:20xx basically we are going to have to move to Revit or Archicad or similar.
What a sad & sorry state of affairs when you learn that, in France 47% of architects (so, some 17000 individuals) are in small (up to 3 persons) outfits & 52% of french architects declare having never done any BIM, this massive potential user group will NOT choose SU, but go straight for the big guns if the BIM capabilities of SU do not shift & fast, so that is some nearly 9000 potential licences in France alone !
So do the math Trimble, if you want just to keep people who mess about on ipads, fine, do nothing for us, but if you are serious about SU for the AEC industry, you have to get cracking and engage with us end users & develop the BIM capabilities we need ! (I know, I’ve been banging on about this for a number of years, but like others here, we in my office have spent a great deal of time and energy finding ways around the short falls, but this is crunch time).
Thanks in advance for finally listening.
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But honestly, the 2d dwg export from sketchup is my biggest problem and I guess you could rewrite that code many thousand times and still use less time than what has been spend by users worrying about this.
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I think people in this thread widely overestimate the place of SU and the role trimble it willing to give it.
SU is ot a direct rival of Archicad or Revit. It is also not a rival of Autocad. When people ask SU to become a rival of one of those companies, they don’t understand it. It would be like comparing iMovie to DaVinci or AdobePremiere.
yeah, no. Again, you have to realise SU is not just tailored for your personal needs. If there are 5 million users (granted, pro, free, ipad…), there are not 5 millions architects.
And even then, I know architects still using vectorworks, allplans or autocad, I know architects using archicad. and yeah, some are on revit. But there is an incredible amount of SU user who… aren’t concerned by these softwares.
So what, SU should be moulded specifically for these 9K potential buyers and not the millions of other ones ?
Plus, again, these architects are moving to architects tools, tailored for BIM. Archicad and revit.
What people need to understand, is that SU is a cheap pro software, and at some point, if their needs go beyond, they either need to dig in the extensions, or move to a more adapted software.
If you design tiny systems, solidworks. if you design airplanes, Catia. and if you design architecture or engineering, especially BIM, then move to a (far more expensive) BIM tool like revit or Archicad.
Because you’ve outgrown sketchup
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Well, that certainly sounds like a “f” off and stop complaining !
Of course I’m not saying that SU should be tailored to the 9000 !
But, as an important subset of the users, it would have been nice to be heard and respected.
You have to agree that much of the imagery & marketing of Trimble around SU is very much architecture based & they like to say that they want it to remain a tool for the AEC industry with their Trimble connect server… so it COULD stay relevant by addressing the IFC issues WITHOUT that taking away from users who don’t work in the building industry.
As to the idea that we have “outgrown sketchup”, that is just down right patronizing, as if sketchup was for children and the real adults use Revit or Archicad.
I’ve said for years that for us smaller outfits, at the coal face of medium sized public & private projects, SU has been a viable option & we have indeed invested much time & therfore $, in making that work for us, and many thanks to all the plugin writers who’ve made that possible !
Is it really that much of a huge task for the developers in the SU team to sort out correct ifc export and adding PSets ?
As I’ve said before, Revit & co are probably fine if you do large complex buildings like hospitals or something, but for what we do, it feels like taking a bazooka to kill a fly, but heh, if that’s the only way for us to continue to be able to stay in our game, yeah, maybe we will just “f” off and do that.
That will at least make @ateliernab happy.
But somehow, I do not think I’m alone…
Happy camping all.
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I don’t believe that ateliernab meant it the way you seem to have taken it — more, like myself, at a certain level of project complexity and interaction with other consultants, SketchUp/Layout works ok and if I were to start to take on larger more complex projects then SketchUp/Layout would not cut the mustard and I would need to consider moving to other platforms.
( of course, if that ever happened, then it would be great if I could make that transition with SketchUp/Layout )
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I am allowed to laugh ?
I laughed last year, and the one before that, and since Trimble acquired SketchUp basically.
They must know by now, not even a post on the SketchUp blog to brag about the new icons agencements in the 2023, sorry, 17,6 version.
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+1 
yep. your needs have outgrown the tools offered by a certain software. I used to work on Canvas, but my needs have outgrown the possibilities, and I’ve moved on to photoshop. I used to cut paper by hand but my needs have outgrown my abilities and now I use a plotter. Architects used to draw perspectives by hand and now they have moved on to 3D rederings. doesn’t mean handmade persective is for childrens.
There is nothing childish here. You start working with a tool, and sometimes along the way you realise you need to move on to another tool. maybe in 10 years Revit users will move to a new platform, just like they did when they left autocad architecture in the first place.
there is a reason why pretty much none of the architects I know (either from my architecture degree or later work) don’t use SU as a main tool. Because despite what trimble says, it’s not suitable for an architecture office as a main tool. And yeah, some people still manage to do it, good for them.
10+ years after my degree, my former colleagues either (still) use autocad for technical stuff+ SU for the renders, or revit/archicad for both, because of BIM. And they see SU as the thing they used when they started.
well that does not make for a good business plan, to be a thing of the past…
The whole building industry, small and big projects, is moving towards more operability. So you need the pdfs, AND the 2D dwg, AND the ifc. More exports to produce or import, more often, and it’s annoying, but that is the reality.
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I’ve never understood the whole “SU is for architects” position from trimble.
SU is great for desighers, home stagers, it can be good for builders and to make quick concepts in architecture. It’s good to make images and such. I’ve seen it used in event organising, tv/movie set design, comicbooks design and many other felds, and I managed to fit well for all of those.
But ask architects to choose between actual architecture software and SU and it’ll loose.
15 years ago it was already vastly outmatched by the BIM twins (revit and archicad), and it’s always weird when I hear / read people say “well, for an architecture software, it’s not at the level of the rest”.
yeah. it’s never been designed, equiped and priced to do so.
EDIT : and let’s be honnest, the fact that a big new thing this year is a REVIT importer should show us that SU is not developped as a rival but as a complementary tool. Design in Revit, put furnitures and do details in sketchup, and then render in vray. SU studio feels like an extension for revit this year 
And so yeah, if you expect, year after year, for SU to move closer in the direction of the BIM twins, you’re up for a yearly dissapointment, as @N1KO mentioned.
The only hope seems to be Studio. THey appear to try to develop studio as an architecture-oriented licence, while pro is a generalist one. But we’re not there yet, and won’t be soon enough.
Well, first off I never said it was just for me…What I said was "It’s not a matter of “if” we/they/anyone uses Revit…and I humbly disagree with you about the amount of companies large/small/otherwise that use Revit. Yea I am an old goat and probably don’t know my butt from a hole in the ground (as many will tell you) but from my experience in consulting for HVAC design? Lately, I have not seen anyone that uses anything else BUT Revit. So this “importer” is gonna save me money bigtime this year.
And if I run into someone who still uses ACAD well I can just import those .dxf files as well…so it’s a win/win for me…
No disappointment from this “hobbyist old goat” here…And I hope everyone has a good day today!
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Obviously there are many of us frustrated with the lack of development in the areas we care for. The way I see it there are only 3 options:
- Keep waiting and hoping something will improve
- Jump ship to another software (archicad, revit, etc)
- Join forces and consolidate what features we need most and then hire one of the many Sketchup developers to build it for us (if possible).
I’m willing to make an investment of my time and money for 3rd option. I cannot do it alone though.
I created application form for those of you that would be willing to participate in a ‘think-tank’ group focus on SU improvements for AEC users.
Please apply here if you’d like to contribute: https://forms.gle/pAnR82BJoQFh5Q1R9
@Beamer2 @ArayaCAD @AK_SAM @medeek @JQL @Julian_Smith @Odd_Haakon_Byberg @paddyclown tag/fwd to others you know who might be interested…
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If you are talking about jumping ship to archica, revit, etc, then you should do it. It’s impossible that Sketchup will go that way.
From Sketchup, I just need minor improvements and mostly bug fixes. Some of the bug fixes were really important to me (Sections inside Xrefed Sketchup Components), some of the improvements I’m no longer counting on them (IFC support and DWG export/import from Layout).
Stop wishing that Sketchup is going different places. It’s going to stay where it is. It’s for architecture design, not for construction documentation. For small stuff you can push it, but that’s it.
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Perhaps, it seems,
at certain levels in the industry…
For me and others, we produce detailed, information rich construction documents for a living.
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Something occured to me just now.
I might just skip this release… migrating my 8 subscription feels like hard work i won’t benefit from.
The continued development of architectural tools and LayOut docs is necessary for both the power users and the small design firms. Otherwise the software just slides into obselescence.
The other approach trimble could take is to say “SketchUp is designed for the concept phase of a small project”
Then , the focus would be in tools that improve sketchup’s capabilities in 3d presentations, animation, hi poly objects and organic modelling.
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