We have been using Sketchup at our school for a number of years very successfully. Unfortunately the latest version of Sketchup Pro 2017’s hardware requirements are such that the hardware specs we normally recommend our students buy is now insufficient to run this version of the software. The new version clearly demands a greater Graphics requirement which just makes the purchase of a higher spec machine prohibitive at school level.
What alternative version of Sketchup could we use instead which does not place the same demand on the video graphics cards?
Depending on the latest version of SketchUp that you used successfully, I’d recommend SketchUp 2016. Also, have you tried my.sketchup? It might be helpful as well.
SU v2017 runs even on an cheap/slow intel HD resp. intel Iris graphics subsystem integrated in the CPU, at least if a recent driver version (w/ OpenGL v3.0+ support) is avail.
Allmost every common system with a recent intel chipset should fulfill this.
But only Intel 3rd generation and higher are still receiving support from Intel.
And I’d suspect that older 3rd generation, if not all, will soon join the end of support list.
This means HD2500 and HD4000. (I believe these only have unsigned Windows 10 drivers via the generic driver imported from Windows 8/8.1.)
So there is no point in telling students to buy anything older than 4th generation.
I personally would not recommend anything older than 5th generation, ie, HD5500 or newer (launched in 2015.)
I did not read it this way, because he specifically says that the requirements of SU2017 are beyond what they normally suggest. (So I am thinking not OpenGL 3.x, which would be very old systems indeed, as even 2nd generation iCore and many Celeron systems meet OpenGL 3.1.)
But it is all speculation on our part, unless @ngerhardi will actually post here what they have been suggesting in the past.