SketchUp Shop on Windows, how to add extensions

Thank you.

Ok question about that and I’d like to hear official SU people only as their answer is the only answer that counts. If someone is paying for SU shop why can’t they also use Make 17 at the same time? I mean they are paying for SU, right?

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But paying for Shop (which does permit commercial use) is still not paying for a desktop Pro licence. Make is NOT licensed for commercial use.

That’s not an official answer, but is my interpretation of the licensing.

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They’re not using Pro Desktop. Make and Pro Desktop are different. You don’t get Layout or Style Builder. They are paying for Shop (basically for the right to use for business and for import and export functions) and using Make for Extensions. I know a few members like to consider themselves the SU license neighborhood watch or something but I’d like for an official answer from SU. I mean their is no way to police this situation.

Edit: ok someone is using shop and sees an extension for say round corner. They open the file in make, use round corner extension and open back in shop and keep working. This is what I was thinking about.

That’s not police, but experienced forum members who are so polite to give quality answers when SketchUp employees are not around. As a paying customer you can also use the direct contact details to reach out to the support team, but they are not working on weekends.

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Ok thanks but what does giving technical help have to do with what I asked?

The usual “official answer” from SketchUp (Trimble) employees is, that they are not allowed to give you legal advice regarding the product ↔ user agreements, and that if you need help to interpret them then you should consult an attorney.

There is a list of links to the various product agreements here:


Now, I do remember one of the product managers posting a clarification having to do with SketchUp product family license agreements. And that is in regard to your statement …

You are under a false assumption. If you read the Web Editions Terms of Service, you will find that it does not grant you (or any user) any specific “commercial usage rights”. Meaning that commercial use is not a right nor a product feature.

It is however a specific limitation for the Free edition only. (section 1.6.1)

No, they are not “paying for SketchUp”. They are paying for a subscription to use a specific product (service) in the family of the SketchUp division’s products.

There are separate agreements for each of these products types. Only the specific terms for each product type list the privileges and limitations for that product.

There is a special section that grants privilige to use other Trimble products in conjunction with your Shop subscription. These are listed in section 2. (“Use of other Trimble Services”).
Only those listed are the products that your subscription gives you the privilege of using.

So, the web editions and desktop editions are separate and are controlled by different terms.
The Desktop Tos also do not specifically grant “commercial usage rights”. The terms also have a specific clause that applies a limitation to the Free / Make editions with regard to commercial use.

The fees differ mostly due to the feature set, but also due to the cost of maintenance and support. (Ie, desktop applications generally cost more to maintain and require more support time and staff.)

This did come up in conversation a few days ago. In that particular case it was an issue with the desktop Pro app, meaning the current and recent versions, where oddly one work around is to use SketchUp 2017. So, I was suggesting that people try Make 2017 and see if that solved the problem. It was quickly pointed out that we can’t tell people to use Make along side Pro, as it’s against the EULA. To solve the problem I referred to we are now sending people a temporary 2017 Pro license.

So, Make can’t be used for commercial use, even if you own a Pro license. It would seem likely that applies to using Make with Shop.

I think the original thinking was that you could have an office full of architects creating elements in Make, and so long as the one person with a Pro license did the final export or save. Same thing could happen now, where the person with a Shop subscription makes sure to open and save the file at least once. Apparently that is frowned upon.

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Thank you for an official answer.

Well, it’s my interpretation of what one of the managers told me. Very few of the SketchUp lawyers help in the forum.

Ah…Hah! I found the reference I was thinking of.

It was John Bacus that said it (in another topic on commercial use of the Shop edition) on whether the terms of service were vague on the question …

Seems like I just got some.

You should understand that no personal opinions said here (whether by employees, gurus, sages, or whomever) can or will change the priviliges or limitations of the legal agreements (aka Terms of Service, EULA, etc.)


Now, don’t get me wrong about your general idea. I’ve no issue myself with the idea that paying customers should be able to buy a single burger of their choice instead of being forced to buy the double with all the fixins.

I’ve long been (and said so) a proponent of a standalone desktop SketchUp for a reasonable price (without the LayOut and StyleBuilder applications, as well as the VR stuff that only a minority use.)

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Dan… I never asked any of those for an answer. Hence why I asked for an answer from a SU employee. Colin answered my question good enough for me. Everyone else’s answers are just opinions. :wink:

You used the word license in your queries, so we thought you wanted a legal answer based upon the licenses.

What I am trying to make you understand, is that even Colin’s statements (as an employee) cannot change the licenses.

He does have “insider information” as to policy. Viz:

His interpretation is 2nd hand at best. But what he said was part of the internal reasoning behind the limitations in the web edition licensing (and the discontinuation of the Make desktop edition itself.)
These internal company “positions” (on the misuse of free editions) are not officially part of the legal agreements. (They do not need to be.)

Meaning that no company must reveal why they license in certain ways and not others. It was nice of Colin to do so. But he is not really revealing any secrets. The misuse of the free editions has been extensively discussed here in this forum. (See the topic on “What’s up with SketchUp Make?”)

Anyway, … I at least did not understand that you would be content to know the WHY beneath the licenses, rather than the WHAT, since you used the term “rights”.


But as I think I showed above the web edition ToS is quite clear as to what priviliges it bestows and what it does not.

Ie, the “take away” is that the Shop web license does not create or bestow a “commercial right” that can be “transported” to apply against a SketchUp desktop product. (As the product manager said, corporate legal did this purposefully.)

Even Colin acknowledged this, in that Customer Service has had to award Pro desktop licenses to some Shop customers where bugs prevented the customer from doing some needed activity in the web edition. (Corrected & clarified by Colin below.)

Ie, they (Trimble SketchUp division employees) themselves cannot extend the priviliiges nor change the limitations of the legal agreement for the web edition license, but they can “gift” a desktop license, if the situation merits it. The customer’s use of the desktop edition afterward is under the desktop license.

Once again, this is not my opinion. I’m telling the readership what the license says plainly, but every user should read terms document it in it’s entirety. It doesn’t really use difficult legal jargon.

And as one of the sages said above, … this is the public user forum. Anyone can and will express their ideas and opinions on any topic (within the guidelines.)

This forum is not the official support avenue. That is done directly through the customer support portal. Any licensed customer can ask licensing questions through that mechanism that would avoid having to hear other opinions.

There are sages here who have been with SketchUp it’s entire 20+ year life and have read every license version there ever was. I’ve been involved for at least 13 years and read it every release at least (to see if there are any changes.) It is not very hard to understand as EULAs go.

Technical issues are not the only things that result in forum questions and answers. Licensing issues are discussed quite frequently. But many others topic genres also occur. (Career advice, How to model, etc. etc.)

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Only one small correction, I don’t think we have used a temp desktop license to solve a Shop problem. The one I mentioned is a desktop issue, where the 2017 version doesn’t have the problem. The feature in question doesn’t exist in Shop.

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Sorry, Colin I misread that it applied to a post-2017 desktop version.

But that doesn’t change the supposition that some situations require the “gifting” of a license.
(I’ve seen it done by you here several times, and I myself have been a recipient of such a “gift”.)

The main point was as you indicated, even being Customer Service, that you could not grant a variance to the license limitation on Make, even for a workaround.

Right, I was told not to do that.

For the case I referred to, the license is only a temporary one, to give us more time to fix the real issue. It only gives them SketchUp Pro 2017 for a couple of months or so.

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I am not entirely sure we have spent enough time on this subject… :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

I enjoyed reading it though. @DanRathbun that was interestingly put! Thanks.