Sketchup pro 2015 compatibility with window 11

SketchUp
1

can sketchup pro 2015 be intstalled/transfered to a new windows 11 computer?

2

It will probably work but of course there’s no guarantee.

3

how would one go about transferring sketchup software/license from one machine to the other? where do you go in the sketchup or trimble website to do that?

4

You have to remove the license from the old machine and add it on the new machine. Find your license info in the e-mail you received when you bought the license. Or go to sketchup.com, scroll to the bottom of the page and try the Retrieve License link.

Presumably you have saved the installer on your old computer. You can copy that to a USB memory stick to transfer it to your new machine.

Remember that SketchUp 2015 hasn’t been supported since 2015 and your maintenance and support ended at least in SketchUp 2016 if not in 2015 so there is no tech support available. Also be aware that the warehouses do not support that old version.

5

You do have a 2016 license available as well, but unfortunately both versions have a problem, where it isn’t possible to add or remove a license. Various things have been tried to fix that problem, but at the moment it has us stumped. The steps Dave gave would normally work.

The best option I can think of would be to install SketchUp Make 2017. But, I don’t know of a web page that has the installer for Make.

6

@colin I’ve also run into this issue on a new computer lately and tried to do some debugging on my own. It looks like SketchUp 2015 license activation uses a older IE web browser (or Edge with Internet Explorer compatibility enabled?). If I open up the SketchUp activation window in MS Developer tools, when I navigate to the Add License page, the Console throws 2 errors.

  • 1st Error is “Invalid character” in addLicenseV2.js line 17, character 28. It appears that this code is using backticks for the window.location.href. However, backticks are an invalid character in IE11
  • 2nd Error is “Unexpected identifier, string or number” in 7fkchmhwzh24.js line 1, character 120857
    • I’m not sure what this is referring to, but my guess is that the main error is with the first error above as the page won’t load the addLicenseV2.js since it is blocked by the invalid backtick character.

I’m hoping this helps narrow things down as I haven’t seen any mention of anything like it in my searches on the errors

7

Specifically, it looks like there are 4 sections in addLicenseV2.js with backtick template literals called from URL https://licensing.sketchup.com/en/2015/add-license.html:

  • Line 17
window.location.href = `skp:addLicense@${sketchupLicense}`;

Could be changed to:

window.location.href = 'skp:addLicense@' + sketchupLicense;
  • Lines 104-108
      let license = `{"serial_number": "${serialNumber}",` +
        `"auth_code": "${authCode}",` +
        `"su_version": "${version}",` +
        `"host_id": "${host}",` +
        `"os_user_name": "${os_user_name}"}`;

Could be changed to:

      let license = '{"serial_number": "'+serialNumber+'",' +
        '"auth_code": "'+authCode+'",' +
        '"su_version": "'+version+'",' +
        '"host_id": "'+host+'",' +
        '"os_user_name": "'+os_user_name+'"}';

Or if trying to send an object:

      let license = {"serial_number": serialNumber,
        "auth_code": authCode,
        "su_version": version,
        "host_id": host,
        "os_user_name": os_user_name};
  • Line 127
              window.location.href = `skp:addLicense@${license_file}`;

Could be changed to:

              window.location.href = 'skp:addLicense@' + license_file;
  • Line 232
    let bgImage = `#fff url(/images/${langCode}/bg-adv-license.jpg) center no-repeat`;

Could be changed to:

    let bgImage = '#fff url(/images/' + langCode + '/bg-adv-license.jpg) center no-repeat';

The only other thing I could see that may cause issues is the use of “let” as IE11 translates let as “var” IIRC, but that may be limited to within “for” loops only.

I also just installed 2016 Make to test out and it calls the javascript add-license.js (not addLicenseV2.js) from URL https://licensing.sketchup.com/en/2016/add-license.html. This looks very similar, but uses “var” instead of “let” and all but the last instance of backtick template literals is not included, so this may be the better option to call for both 2015 and 2016 (2017 appears to use Chrome/Chromium instead of IE). For this file, the only backticks are on Line 238 (same as Line 232 above):

      var bgImage = `#fff url(/images/${langCode}/bg-adv-license.jpg) center no-repeat`;
8

Hello sidtheduck. Thank’s for the sharing. Just a question, did you manage to get 2015 version work with the solution you explain ? As I am not an IT guy, I didn’t really understood the trick, but just need to know if I need to investigate your solution if finally it works… could you confirm ?
Where to find this addLicenseV2.js file ? I didn’t find it in my sketchup folders.
Rgds

9

Not yet. I can get the updated javascript to appear to work on my end using a local proxy, but I keep getting a response back from the SketchUp servers that it is an invalid license / authorization. I’m still trying to work on it more, but so far it has not been working.