How about adding veterans to the list?
@jclements I am a little older than you but that is what my Hobby License was trying to suggest. 
and @RLGL I am also a veteran.
BTW guys, how do you include quotes from other posters. I thought I had done it before but nothing I tried seemed to work. Much easier to do on forums like SketchUcation and Twilight Render. 
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To quote other posters, highlight the text in the post and choose âquoteâ. The reply window will open.
OK - now I got it. 
That was too darn easy⌠
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Had to go try it on my iPad also. 
This is getting sort of crazy.
Why should a senior get a discount? There are certainly many non-senior users who are at a lower income level than many seniors. Maybe the cost of living in the userâs area should be a factor. How about family size?
Equality is impossible to achieve in variable rate pricing. It is just nuts.
I would kind of like to go back to the original suggestion which is based on the idea that those of us who like SketchUp but do not use it to generate income. Many of users in this category can afford/or at least justify the Pro licensing.
I was trying to suggest a pricing scheme that is not free but is âmore affordableâ.
I fail to see the that âbecause a user is not going to use the product very muchâ they expect a discounted price. Apply that line of reasoning to any other retail product. The logic just makes no sense.
Yeah, I donât get a discount from Sony on my cameras and lenses because âIâm not a pro, and donât use them very muchâ. I have wrenches and hammers and other tools and they sit mostly unused until I need them. I still paid full retail for them when I bought them, I didnât have a check box âAre you a Pro?â, âHow many times a year will you use this tool?â at the hardware store.
People got spoiled with the âfreeâ notions introduced by Google and others and it is hard to get that genie back in the bottle.
The idea of a âhobbyâ license is interesting - and right now there are options for this, but where does SU / Trimble draw the line? Include plugins or not? Include export or not? How do they manage if the software is being used truly for âhobbyâ and not for commercial use?
Maybe they should devise a system so you pay per click - Push pull is .10$ every click, but Undo is 4.5$ per click. And they can meter it like a cab - every minute the software is open it costs .02$. You buy credits and keep a credit card on file. Absurd, for sure to try to come up with a system like this.
And SU / LO is the best bang for the buck out there in terms of easy to use design software. It is not for everyone or every project⌠but it is a good all rounder, is fast, cheap, and can in the right hands produce beautiful output and projects.
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It has nothing to do with frequency but is based on whether you are using it to generate income. IMO
At least that was what I was trying to suggest.
Yes you are correct but those are one time charges and not annual fees you must keep paying or the tool is removed. Also, yes it will be hard to enforce the non-pro use.
well pro vs non pro use is and has always been an honour system. You canât prove you didnât do something.
Iâve been on the internet long enough to confidently say that an honour system donât work. Especially in these times of inflation and price raises.
I mean, look at the old make version. back then, for free, you had the same as pro, minus some export options and a handful of tools. However, through extensions, you could get a pro-level software.
need topography ? Fredo has a solution. need solid tools ? eneroth has one. need to export / import ? there are a few of those as well. even plugins that allow you to export / print to scale with great ease, layout wasnât as developed then.
depending on what youâre using SU for, you could get, for free, a better make + plugin than the vanilla pro. still can. (many woodworkers still use make + a set of extensions in their shops, some of them commercially.)
Trimble has no real incentive making a lower cost SU Pro version aimed at non-commercial users. especially considering the low price of SU.
Sure, Go could come with a desktop version, but it would be extension-free, much like the web one. anything else would hurt their sales of SU pro/studio.
imo.
First of all, I respect your opinion.
However, on some other forums, I see a number of people still using the 2017 Free version. I was trying to suggest something that would give users like that an incentive to purchase a license. From what I see, and my own experiences a version that does not support plugins is almost useless. You cannot generate much detail in your models without them IMO.
Again, I respect and understand your opinion. I was actually trying to suggest something that I thought would actually generate additional revenue for Trimble.
Sorry. Respectfully, I canât agree with that. All of the geometry in this steam engine model was created with the native tools. No extensions needed for any of it.
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Gotta back @DaveR on this one. Extensions are great for certain workflows, but not required for detail or speedy modeling. Helpful? Oh yeah!! Required⌠not really!
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yeah, âimoâ wasnât the right term. itâs not âmy opinionâ as in âI firmly believe thatâ
itâs observations of the way the software industry works, and trimbleâs decisions over the last decade (exit make then shop, in goes free and go). I personally wouldnât mind seeing make come back, even within the go subscription, at a price. but I donât expect it to.
Iâm pretty sure making a low cost desktop version WITH extensions could hurt sketchup proâs revenues.
because again, if all you need to do is âswear on your scoutâs honour that you wonât use it for businessâ (basically the only possible way) in order to get a discount, Iâm pretty sure most SU PRO users Iâve met over the last decade will lie. plain and simple. Iâm already tempted to.
Sure, some free users will start paying, but would it compensate the potential lost of revenues of PRO users ? not sure. Trimble must have a prediction model for that somewhere 
Now, to be proactive here, and not just rain on the parade 
there are still things that Trimble could do to artificially lower SU Proâs cost :
keep free and pro as they are. keep studio as a âall inclusive with all the toolsâ deal - give it all the new toys as an exclusivity for a time.
but sell SU PRO without layout. â sell layout separately. also revit importer, and scan essential. all those things.
Basically, say SU PRO for 270 instead of 320, layout for 50 extra, revit importer and scan essential for a price too, VR⌠and so on.
it would lower the price of SU Pro for those who donât need anything else while in the same time allow us to buy and use some fancier tools without doubling the bill.
People getting SU/LO would pay the same price as before, but could pimp their software with the official tools just like we do with extensions
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OK I am obviously way off track so I will just back off.
donât , just because a big company follows a different objective doesnât mean we simple users canât challenge and discuss it. and who knows, doing so, one of us might actually find THE idea of the decade
But enter this discussion knowing that in the end, the decision is about stuff like user retention, profit margins, rentability, 5-year objectives.
if trimble see value in reshuffling the current 4 licence thing, they will do it. but what they call value might differ from what we call value 
It depends on what youâre modeling, every now and then I like to model complex stuff, Iâve modeled a Ferrari street car and the F2004, I also like to model buildings with organic shapes like the Heydar Aliyev Center and the London Aquatics Center, all those models would be almost impossible to create without plug-ins like vertex tools, subD, curviloft, joint push pull, and quad face tools.
For my personal projects those plug-ins arenât required I use other plug-ins for design and model, most if not all of them do things faster than doing it with native tools, the best example is profile builder, thereâs nothing that profile builder can do that is not possible to do with native tools, but it can make it a lot faster, it can save hours or even days of work.
Great model DaveR.
I am obviously not as skilled as you.
Thanks - good points as well
So, I guess the bottom line is that I just do not have the talent or fortitude you guys do. I now have to go off and evaluate whether the Pro license is worth it. 
Thank you.
Itâs only practice. You could certainly do it if you want.
FWIW, Iâve been paying for an annual license since before there was ever a free version to choose. Even when all of my modeling was for my own hobby use. Although I do also use it commercially now, the price of the subscription is a small percentage of my investment in my hobbies.