So, the only way to get desktop version is to buy Pro version … sorry but i am not making any profit with SketchUp and web version is just abomination (slow and crashing all the time). I guess it is time to switch to Fusion 360 or Blender, they superior anyway, not to mention their file support. And using older version of SU is not great because of limited plugin support.
Trimble sketchup, was the bigining of the end for sketchup. I have no respect for it any more. I think and hope they misread the market. A lott of people are moving on to blender. I just did. I have always been one to vote with my feet. And I just voted
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I have the 2018 PRO version now Version 18.1.1180. I upgraded to Majove on my iMac a while ago, but don’t know if I have the upgraded SU Pro for compatibility. Do I?
Aside from that, I see no reason to upgrade to SU 2019, and certainly no reason to go from option $120 M&S upgrades to mandatory $299 subscription pricing…or my SU will simply stop working!!! Yikes!
My reasons for not upgrading are not only the paucity of feature improvements - dashed lines? Really?? - but also the long-standing difficulty of migrating extensions and customized toolbars etc. in the new version. The yearly upgrades have always been a pain for this reason; I always forget how to do this in the interim and have to struggle with adding it all back. I’ll wait for SU Pro 2020, unless…
Trimble does something about handling large models. I have a 672MB model and even on my high end iMac with 4 GHz Intel Core i7 32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3 it’s been known to crash, especially if I turn on things like shadowing (who knew the governing bodies would be concerned with shadows and light-blocking from a 1,000’ H X 2,000’ W building?!).
I was tempted to upgrade to the new iMac Pro with up to 18 cores (I have 4 now), but it seems like SU is the limitation here, not hardware.
Sticking with SU 2018 for now…
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While I don’t mind the Subscription idea generally, this is the one big pain in the butt with it. I use BricsCAD for the odd bit of AutoCAD work, mainly to prepare DWG files for import into Sketchup, and that’s on Subscription. It’s due to renew this month and if I don’t pay, the software dies. When I think what I’ve spent on it over the last few years, surely by now I should be able to own the version I have.
Maybe with subscription it should be a case of, after a certain amount of time or so many payments, the license is released to you and the software then becomes yours, if that makes sense. While it may mean no more upgrades for that version, if it’s working well, and everything is setup and stable, then that might be ok for a lot of users.
Im also with you on sticking with 2018 for the time being. I have the same issues on my iMac, (sounds like the same spec as yours), and I’ve come to the same conclusion. It’s not the hardware, it’s Sketchup/Layout that is the issue.
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Yes, 2017 Make is there and nothing really changed for the 2018 release anyways. You just have to know to get it, and then know to download warehouse models for that release year. It’s easy for us pro’s but it isn’t intuitive nor straight forward for our casual friends when we put them towards SketchUp as an easy to use modeling software.
this is all a lot of small things adding up and this is the same conversation that was happening when 2018 came out: unhappy customers and unhappiness with the direction Trimble is going in.
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Of course I know there are differences between SketchUp, Rhinoceros and Blender. That’s why I’m a proud SketchUp user, since @Last 
I’m just discussing about UX and input devices, that are the same in the whole big computer industry.
Please, try Rhinoceros with a Magic Mouse and a Magic Trackpad. I’m sure you’ll think “why SketchUp hasn’t this yet?”
I wait for your thoughts about 
I’m really happy with Subscriptions, it’s a fair way to keep our software always updated and accessible for many. 299$/yr it’s a perfect price for the software I use most + its online services included.
@jbacus My complain is about the lack of big new features in this 2019 update, that’s probably why many don’t trust Subscriptions.
- SketchUp UI is old and messy (In 2019 I still can’t reorder scenes with drag and drop)
- There’s no iPad (modeler) app
- we must download third-party plugins to extend features (I’m always referring to my really loved SubD, Soap Skin & Bubbles, Curviloft)
- In LayOut and SketchUp there’s no automatic way to display upper-section with dashed lines.
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I guess I’ll stick to sketchup pro 2018 forever… or until I find another software. I’m pretty sad !
Unless I’ll be able to upgrade my classic licence from 2018 to 2020 ? cause there’s no way i’m upgrading to 2019 nor paying a subscription.
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That is actually a no brainer for many. I have been using SU pro ver6 from the get go and it is still going strong… now running on win10.
For me the 2019 release is really a bit dissapointing one. I’ve been using Sketchup as an architect for 10 years or so, mainly to test architectural design ideas before going to actual BIM and production model (using Archicad for that) and also to create fast visualisations for clients. With plugins like Artisan, Vray, Skatter and many Fredo6 plugins Sketchup has been by far the fastest software package for my speed modeling and visualisation needs. Been very happy with it.
Dashed lines and support for VR are nice features to have but personally I was rather hoping for much more fundamental improvements like better native file importers and ability to handle much larger models than was possible with prior versions. Large files have been a nightmare to handle and to import for years. It’s like dragging a ball and chain every time I import a terrain or add some detailed objects. Please fix this in upcoming updates.
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What I find most disappointing of all is that all the talk and comms coming from the SketchUp team is happening now, AFTER the software is released, and as some way to mitigate the general disappointment after a very, very thin release. What should have happened, as I’ve waxed on previously, is that this sort of engagement should be happening all year and continuously BEFORE (or whilst) the software is being developed, so that all new releases blow the doors off and give people what they really need and want. What’s happening currently is known (at least in the UK) as shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted.
PRO-ACTIVITY and ENGAGEMENT are the only modern way to ensure you retain your loyal customers (and help that base grow) by providing the software they genuinely need day in day out and which also allows them to feel that they’ve had a hand in the progression of the product. An aspect which is often overlooked.
Another issue is the double edged sword of open source. On the one hand it gives developers the chance to create amazing plug-ins (sincerely thank you all) but conversely it then allows the software company to become very lazy and rely on these developers to do the heavy (and difficult) lifting for them. I suspect this may even be part of Trimble’s business development plan. One of the downsides to this approach is that more often than not the next SketchUp user to edit your model (even someone within your own organisation) hasn’t got the same plug-ins installed and therefore either can’t edit the model correctly or undoes all your work and breaks the parametric advantages of these plugins. This is a real pain and ideally Trimble would buy up some of the better plugins and bake them into the software to avoid any of these issues and expand SU’s arsenal of tools in the process.
As for the release itself, dashed lines is nice but seriously, is that it? Seriously?..It’s almost embarrassing that a software developer misses the (generally accepted) release date by months and then only adds dashed lines into the mix, something even the most basic CAD packages had included in their initial release. The rest of the bug fixes should have come out as updates over the last 15 months and not be considered to be “improvements”. The zoom control in LayOut has only been added to correct the error in LO2018 which meant zooming in and out was like swimming through treacle, so it’s not much of an added feature (although appreciated) and which is pretty standard in most CAD software.
I don’t have an issue with the subscription model (we all knew it was coming) but there should definitely be monthly and/or quarterly sub options as well. This would open up the possibility to more people of using the software for a single project (house extensions etc) because hand on heart, from our point of view, SU & LO still aren’t commercially viable to use as a firms daily CAD driver to fully deliver projects other than the odd extension. It just does not lend itself to the task as well as Revit and even AutoCAD still does. That being said bake-in some of those plug-ins (Skalp, Meedek’s, FlexTools, 1001Bit Tools etc) and make them all work together seamlessly (which unfortunately they currently don’t, arrgghhh open source 
) and also fully open source LayOut for the devs (yayyy open source 
) to get to grips with and then you’d really be getting somewhere.
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Exactly where we are, except we’re using Revit for BIM. Most of the practices I’ve worked at in the past (and now my own) approach it in very much the same way. And most would love to go full-SketchUp if it offered something between where it is now and the over-complex nature of Revit. It could really be all things to all practices with the right development direction and drive.
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Exactly. This is something which Trimble doesn’t seem to grasp. SU is a non-essential add-on (trinket) to our (most of us) architectural tool set. Despite it making very little economic sense I feel we tolerate the situation because it’s nice (and fun) to use, and which can’t be said of most CAD software, but this does not make it irreplaceable.
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Question: with the new focus on subscriptions, will you be sharing a (partial) roadmap of SketchUp/Layout improvements you’re planning? That would give us more motivation to sign up for a subscription.
It would also help with concerns that 2019 has too few improvements, for us to see there’s a commitment to specific improvements, and encourage us to stay with SketchUp.
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Unfortunately for me SU/LO is essential for my work
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I think this is quite unfair. Google bought SketchUp and released a free version to get people to fill Google Earth with models. They didn’t do a lot to improve or maintain the program, just used it for their one purpose. Trimble has put a lot of resources into improving the program, including doing much needed work cleaning up the code and rewriting parts of it, such as the graphics pipeline. While this under the hood work isn’t immediately noticeable to the end user, and thus not very glamorous, it is crucial for having a stable and maintainable project that allows for future updates. It’s also very important for the performance, which is something a whole bunch of people in this thread asks for having improved.
I’ve only used on of those extensions, but I have a list of about 18 other extensions I can’t use SketchUp without. I think a lot of people have similar lists, but that the extensions differ a lot from person to person. Imagine how messy the UI would be with all those extensions included.
That said there could certainly be a lot of polishing made to the UI, like drag and drop scene tabs. Also an effort to make extensions feel and behave more consistent to SketchUp’s native tools would make SketchUp feel a lot less messy.
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so, does it mean that if we buy sephaira now, we would qualify for a studio licence?
I would not call the SketchUp team lazy. They do a ton of work to improve the life for us developers by fixing bugs, adding new API functionality and improving documentation. Also it’s not really true that extension developers do the heavy lifting. It’s quite easy to get an extension to work but it requires a ton of knowledge to design a good and future proof API. Many of the popular plugins are quite poorly made when you take a closer look at them but still do their job great. The core and API however need a much higher level of quality to assure they can be improved in the future while still supporting existing extensions.
The reason why these tools don’t feel like integrated parts of SketchUp is not because they are made by third party developers, but because these developers lack knowledge in how to make something look, behave and feel “SketchUppy”, with the exception of Skalp that tries to emulate access to the graphics pipeline by drawing physical geometry to the model. As an example Solid Tools is a native feature but still doesn’t feel very integrated as it doesn’t honor components.
Rather than integrating functionality that a lot of people have no use far (and having it designed by people that don’t use SketchUp) I think there should be made an effort to spread knowledge in what makes SketchUp feel like SketchUp. It would also be great if Skalp had access to drawing to the view directly, instead of having to draw physical geometry to the model, assign layers to it etc. With this API improvement Skalp could be made to feel just as integrated as the native section fill.
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So now your even charging for the online modler… good job chasing away any young new designers from using SketchUp (slow clap)… Your making a huge mistake.
I don’t mind the price increase for us professionals. But the previews “Make version” is the main reason so many people know and love this software. It was free and accessible and therefor we learnt to use it, and upgraded to pro when we became professionals. The new price is going to have consequences for number of new users.
But kudos on the Adobe and VR integration. At Least now i hope your using your new subscription money to finally fix alle the annoyances and missing features in the layout software.
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That doesn’t come across well.
I have been using SU/LO since forever and it is by far the best software for my needs - It does everything generally very well.