Sketchup For School Printing to Scale

We need to to be able to print to scale from Sketchup for schools. This could be downloading a scale PDF that could be printed. through the browser print window.

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I need that for my kids as well. I have them create measured drawings in sketchup and then bring the drawings into the shop to make and assemble the parts. We are getting around the lack of a print function by taking screenshots and pasting those into word processing documents, but it’s a kludgey tool path and an added complication that my 11 year olds really don’t need.

I hit that limitation too with my class. We couldn’t print their drawings to scale to compare to the hand drawn version they did earlier in the course.

One workaround: As the teacher, get a (Desktop) copy of SkechUp Make (or Pro) on your machine, have your students share their file with you (I created a shared folder for students to “hand in” their work to me), and then you can open them up in Make on your machine and print them from there. That will let you print them to scale.

Actually, printing is the least of my problems, but not having the ability to print is a major symptom of the arrogant attitude Trimble has taken toward educators and schools after last summer’s forced upgrade from SketchUp Pro 2015.

SketchUp for Schools breaks most of the CAD curriculum I’ve built around SketchUp Pro over the past ten years. It is forcing massive, rather than incremental changes in the tool chains I have developed for my woodworking, 3d printing, and CNC units, and I am having to rewrite most of my assignments, assessments, and handouts just to accommodate a software change that adds NO functionality that my middle school students need.

At a rural school, with limited bandwidth, running ancient, and largely salvaged/donated machines, I was teaching a state of the art cad program as well as 3d printing and CNC machining to middle schoolers.

I beg, find, repair, or build from scratch the woodworking machines, workbenches, computers, tools…basically everything for my shop program, but instead of spending this summer building additional capacity for my program, I am going to waste it redoing work that I had already done just because I was forced out of using an older version of sketchup.

It would take very little to push me, and a lot of other STEM teachers into switching to Fusion 360 right now, and I think AutoDesk knows this.

Sorry, had to vent.

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I understand. My curriculum for next year involves Match Photo which can’t be done in SUfS, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen when the time comes.

Can you download and install SU Make 2017 and run with that for now? That’s what our current best option is.

Unfortunately no, most of my old machines simply can’t handle the graphics demands of any version, Make or Pro after SU 2015. I’d need to buy new graphics cards and I really don’t have the budget for that.

Oh, I see.

Wait, has Trimble forced schools to give up SU2015 in favor of the new web based version?

No. SketchUp development supports the last three versions – currently SketchUp 2016, 2017, and 2018. Since we are no longer updating, fixing, or providing support for 2015, we do not include it as part of our free offering to schools. Schools that have G Suite and primarily use Chromebooks have access to the free web version, SketchUp for Schools. Schools that do not, still have access to SketchUp Pro 2016, 2017, and 2018 for free.

But schools that do have G Suite cannot chose between the full, desktop based version and the “toy” version, is that right?

No, that’s not right. Schools have the choice to use whichever product they want, SketchUp Pro or SketchUp for Schools.

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Joy, you are misrepresenting the truth. You are forcing schools to either upgrade to a much more resource intensive version of SketchUp Pro, that many of us cannot run on our old machines, or you are requiring us to switch to the web version that has an entirely different interface.

Neither change is trivial. SketchUp Pro breaks my computer lab in ways that are beyond my ability to fix. Adapting my curriculum to fit SketchUp Web is requiring me to recreate videos, handouts, assignments and assessments that took me 6 years to produce, and at the expense of NOT working on the CNC, 3d printing, and engineering design units that are to follow it.

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Joy’s explanation of SketchUp’s Educational program is correct, we offer both SketchUp for Schools via G Suite for Education and SketchUp Pro through the Statewide Grant program. Our support policy for SketchUp Pro covers the current and previous two versions for both commercial and educational users. Previous versions of SketchUp will continue to run for as long as they are installed on your computer, so you can continue to run any version of SketchUp without being forced to upgrade.

While SketchUp Make 2015 is no longer officially supported, it is still available for download from our Help Center. While we can’t guarantee that it will continue to work, if your school computers don’t meet the system requirements for currently supported versions, you are welcome to use it.

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