Thank you, and I’m glad our new pricing model makes it easier for you to afford SketchUp. That was exactly what we hoped, and I’m pleased to welcome you to our user community!
I haven’t said it yet in this thread, but I have answered this question in great detail in the thread “What’s up with SketchUp Make?”. In short (that thread is over 900 posts long!) the launch of SketchUp for Web in no way impacts our future support for SketchUp desktop client. Both versions of SketchUp share a common modeling core, though their UI differs in various ways. If you depend on high performance and access to modeling extensions, SketchUp Pro on your desktop computer remains the best choice.
We have never shared our roadmap publically, for a variety of reasons. The most inflexible of those reasons has to do with our status as a publically-traded U.S. corporation, where “forward-looking statements” (like the implicit promises of future feature development in a roadmap) are explicitly prohibited under US GAAP standards. As private companies, neither Cortona nor Skatter are subject to these rules.
I certainly do take all comments from our user community seriously, as evidenced by my regular posting on these forums answering questions. But if you’re mainly worried that the release of SketchUp for Web signifies and end to development for SketchUp Pro for Windows or macOS, please allow me to assure you that we are planning to continue support for both platforms for a long time.
I’d be keen to see which other forums you’re reading, and to reply to any community questions that have come up there about our new subscription licensing model or about the features included in SU2019. Is there a particular forum you think deserves our team’s attention?
I doubt any of us are pleased if users like you are unhappy, or worse feel insulted by something we have written. I hope it is clear that our new subscription for SketchUp Pro does, in fact, include considerably more features, products and services than our classic SketchUp Pro license. I recognize that if you’re considering only the features in our desktop client application, you may feel the release is a little light. It is tough to value features you didn’t anticipate, but the combination of Trimble Connect, SketchUp Shop and our AR/VR viewer applications— added to the annual maintenance and support for SketchUp Pro classic, would cost considerably more than $299/yr if purchased separately.
Doubtless, you’ll respond that you don’t want to pay for things you didn’t ask us to develop, but I think you’ll find the combination surprisingly valuable if you take a closer look.
Both Rhino and Blender are very different applications from SketchUp, with different capabilities. If you really want SketchUp to be a rendering/animation package like 3DSMax or Maya, I think Blender is an excellent (free) alternative. If what you really want from SketchUp is freeform surface modeling and a visual scripting environment, then Rhino and Grasshopper are excellent alternatives. On the other hand, if what you mostly want is quick hard surface modeling optimized for architectural form, SketchUp has quite a bit of value to offer you.
I’m sure folks would be keen to hear more about this story, though it is probably is a bit long and complicated for this thread. Maybe we could split this out into a new thread?
I’m pleased to see FormZ (and it’s developer Auto.des.sys) thriving after so many years. Prior to joining the SketchUp team, I was a regular and enthusiastic FormZ user— it was among the only really strong 3D modeling packages for the AEC community on Macintosh computers. I’ve spent many long hours in front of FormZ. Though, to be sure, not so much in recent years.
I’m not sure how their plugin architecture works, but I agree that it is a fine, full-features modeling, rendering and animation package that deserves a closer look if you are seeking alternatives to SketchUp.
The sad part is that I am a FormZ user, but I prefer Sketchup and have been using it since @last days. There are many plugins for FormZ? but for the most part, its modeling toolset doesn’t need any as it has most of the functions you might ever need for modeling. The only plugin I have for it is the “Thea Renderer” everything else is there.
However… like many disappointed customers here with this 2019 release, the lack of functional developments that have been sought on these forums and a focus on marketing and a new business model ( that no users to my recollection have craved ) is the kind of activity that may tip the scale in favor of users such as myself to seek/revert to other options, many of which you so graciously point out. I hope not, but the fact that you recommend these alternative apps must be somewhat conflicting for you, when one would hope that you could more confidently champion your own product?
I’ve never seen seen such open disappointment for a SU release and I wonder if your team are in anyway surprised by this reaction, or is this forum not really representative of the bigger picture.
Maybe the preamble of the release that pointed out “how hard you all worked on this” led to too high of an expectation for what we ( as customers ) actually got as opposed to it satisfying your own needs?
I know it’s not the right thread for this but do anyone notice that the SketchUp Viewer app on iPad is down since they released SU2019. It’s the version 5. It crashes at startup. I keep receiving complain from client who can’t look at my models. That puts me in a tricky situation all week. From what I understand, the v5 is the update to accommodate model save in SU2019. Any idea anyone? The support is radio silence on this. I just hope they will fix an update for next week.
There’s tons, and tons, and tons, and tons… and tons of suggestions on your forum, in Layout Feature Requests.
Here’s a few I can thing of:
-Dynamic component (with field attributes). This will allowed me to creating bullets, marker and elevation marker with a dynamic attribut. Coordinate in most case. This is a must when I create Rigging plot/point map.
-Multiple unit dimensioning.
-Component allowing multiple layer nested element.
-zoom extend for viewport. (size the viewport to the max of the model)
-Add snapping nodes to elements.
-Vectorial patterns (This is not a must but could be nice)
-create a pattern (hatch) boundary by clicking an area. (instead of creating a shape on top of a shape!)
-2D drawing tool just like sketchup. (lines curve auto cut)
-STOP the auto connect lines!!!
-Fix the visual bug in vectoriel mode.
-Make the text edit more constant when zoom in & out
-Make the text edit less laggy. Microsoft Word 1988 works better than this!
-Add bounding box to leaders. (Without having to edit text individually)
-Make dimensioning more intelligent when the text don’t fit.
-Full control on the SU styles. Would avoid an endless back n forth between SU & LO. (also proposed by Eneroth)
-Add locus point feature.
-Add radius and diameter dim.
-Possibility of turning shadow on with Hidden Line view style.
-Structural grid maker (dynamic please) (updating the numbering when add a axis) a bit like Revit
-Base point dimensioning.
What?! Am I reading this correctly? Did you add the ability to use and create dynamic components into the online Shop version?! You guys are literally the best! I’ve been a Pro user for years now and I was really hoping this is the direction you would take this whole online thing. Here’s my use case, I’m going to use SketchUp Pro to be the primary modeler for all of our 3D assets. But I’d like to have my coworkers build layouts in 2D using Shop and dynamic components I built to keep it easy for them. This is exactly what I was hoping for, I’m super excited about this, I never would have bought my co-workers a Pro license because they aren’t modelers, but I can definitely talk my boss into Shop licenses to just give them the ability to move around and place the dynamic components I create in Pro. Love it, thank you so much!
Yes, I was thinking about a ruby API for LO and then developers could use it to maybe offer alternate ways to speed up work flow and what comes to mind is instead of drawing a single line in LO and using the offset tool to do a double line, developers could come up with a way to draw multiple lines at once.
I was responding to the original post. While dynamic components have been around for forever, I was using SketchUp in 2008, they were not available in SketchUp Make when I used it last year. It looks like they are available in SketchUp Shop online though. That’s powerful. I can idiot proof the design process with dynamic components and get reasonably priced licenses for coworkers that are not professional modelers, but could make something great using my provided assets. I have long wanted to delegate some basic aspects of the design process to my coworkers to save me some time and now I can do that. That’s very exciting.
Here we go again. can we get our terminology straight? Bryceosaurus said:
Does everyone get the minor updates or not? If everyone on the perpetual and subscription plans get the minor updates, then the M&S plan is nothing more than paying for major upgrades–which brings me back to my earlier question of why does anyone need to be on M&S when they can just “buy” a needed update when it comes along? Also, does one need to be enrolled in M&S continuously or not? Where can I find this information on your website?
Edit–now I just found this:
“Snapshot of code at a particular time…” Now that is illuminating, but is it the definitive answer? Basically saying that perpetual users who are not on M&S will not get minor updates. Am I reading that right? Can the three of you get together on that? And if I skip M&S for X years, is there a penalty to get back in? Would love to find all these answers on the website if you could direct me.
pcmoor was kind enough to highlight the section I’m talking about. The $120/year subscription Shop subscription includes Dynamic Components Use & Create. Link to that page below.
