Sketchup Reliability

I am curious to know if any problems that may develop in Sketchup get fixed automatically in the background when you are online. I am just curious as I have never seen an update or a patch notification since I have used it and never experienced a problem. Or is it just that reliable?

Which version of SketchUp are you referring to? Your profile is incomplete so it’s not possible to tell from looking at that.

None of them get updated while in use. The desktop client versions would only get updated if there was a new revision that you download and you install. You would get a message indicating there’s a new revision available but you have to initiate the download. There haven’t been any revision releases for SU2018 Pro so far and if you’re using an earlier version, you can expect there won’t be any revisions coming for it.

The web-based versions get updates frequently but you only get the updated version when you open a session after the update has been pushed. It won’t change while you are using it. The updates are intended to be transparent to the user. That is, you never get alerted to an available update and you don’t have to do anything to install a new version. It’s just there when you open it.

2 Likes

Personally I would never view a web app as reliable. There has been a few posts here in the forum about syncing problems and missing files, and on top of that your own internet connection can go down, e.g. from a power blackout in the other half of town. Even if it works in 99% of cases I wouldn’t be comfortable knowing it might not work now, or tomorrow, or next week. The SketchUp client on the other hand is very reliable. The only thing that can change it from one day to the next appears to be Windows 10 updates.

4 Likes

In my experience SketchUp’s desktop client stability has improved significantly since the first Trimble SketchUp 8, and I feel since 2016 the amount of other inconsistencies and bugs you can still discover (and then report) has gone closer to zero than ever before.

Part of this is that the “continuous deployment” of SketchUp for Web allows to shorten testing and bug fixing cycles, which improves quality. This also benefits the desktop version even if it has a major release only once a year.

It is true that wifi can suddenly be down (greetings to my office) or a big cloud provider has problems (happened earlier this year) and then you realize how dependend you are as a web app user. Additionally, anything relying on networking is less reliable, because there is latency and timeouts and it suffers from packet loss as part of design (at least TPC), which does not happen for processes running on the same CPU.

4 Likes

Thank you all for your responses. In answer to Dave’s question. Using Pro’18. One thing I have been impressed with in SU is that once a new version comes along it seemed to have worked without issue straightaway whereas in some other software there have been bugs and needed to update during the lifetime of the programme.

There are still a few issues the SketchUp team are working on but they have, in recent versions, managed to clear up many of the bugs that used to plague us. Every new version has more bug fixes and they work hard trying to make sure there aren’t any problems. Of course it’s dependent on many things outside their control, too. Hardware variations and, as Christina mentioned, operating system and graphics driver updates that create problems. Mostly those things seem to cause users the biggest issues. It’s a bit like driving. You might have the best maintained car and you might be the most highly trained driver but it’s the things outside your control like the incompetent driver you share the road with or the unexpected piece of rubbish in the roadway that is going to get you.

1 Like

BTW Where Do I update my profile?

Click on your avatar (the R in the dusty rose circle) in the upper right corner of the forum page. Then click on the gear icon. You should be able to find your profile to edit.

Profile on the left and then scroll down through the various fields to complete your profile with the SketchUp version number and license type along with the actual operating system.

Thank you done.

2 Likes