Hi: I am in an odd position: I want to upgrade from Sketchup 2017 (free) to Sketchup 2022 (Pro) (I especially wanted to take advantage of a recent 25% discount offer). However I haven’t been able to make the jump because my main use for Sketchup is experimenting with ideas for remodeling our house + garden, and a couple of guest cottages: and my kids (10 and 13) have been “helping” me with these projects for a while now: they really enjoy using Sketchup and (esp. my 10 year old) have got pretty good with it: so my problem is this: if I upgrade to Sketchup Pro, then AFAIK I can no longer share my models with my kids (running Sketchup 2017); but I can’t afford to spend $900 on 3 licenses for Sketchup Pro in order to continue sharing models with my kids: so I seem to be left with only one option: remain using Sketchup 2017 for as long as I can, and then (presumably) give up and look for a cheaper alternative. I’ve talked to Trimble sales, and they confirmed that there’s no “family” license: the best I could do is buy one license and then only one of us (3) could use it at a time: but that’s very inconvenient. Is there a technical (or commercial) solution that I’m missing? Some way in which I can upgrade myself to Pro (for <= $300) and yet continue sharing my models with my kids (bi-directionally)?
You can use Save as… and choose sketchUp 2017 as the file type so they can open that the files.
I love the idea of you getting the whole family involved! 
Do as @DaveR says and your kids can open your models.
You can open their models and your own made in Make 2017 as newer versions of SketchUp are backwards compatible.
Thanks for that: I did consider that but I ruled it out because (I assumed, perhaps wrongly?) that any post-2017 features of the model would be lost each time I export it in 2017 format, and then when I re-import the models from my kids I’d potentially have to redo them. Is that a concern? ie. if I export a 2022 model in 2017 format and then re-import it into 2022 again, is the resulting model potentially changed/limited by that process?
That’s not much that would be lost saving back to v2017. Your kids would see “layers” instead of “Tags” and there’d be no tag folders. As for the changes in the actual modeling, they wouldn’t matter after the geometry is created.
And there’s dashes in the Tags which would disappear but you can manage that one easily enough.
Some of the tools in 2021 or 2022 are new, but in my own use the only things I notice I lose in saving back to 2016 or 2017 are tag folders (so I don’t use them) and dashed lines.
When reloading a 2017 model back in 2021 or 2022, I only need to change the appearance of my Dashed tag back to some form of dashed appearance.
There may be other things others use that I don’t, which don’t survive a round trip.
But dashed lines are the only one I notice.
PS. As usual, Dave gets there faster!
Thanks: I’ve been using scenes to group tags (layers): do tag folders replace that functionality? or are they just another way of achieve the same goal? (turn on/off a group of tags all at once)
No.If they replace anything, it’s nesting of groups and components although there’s still a place for nesting.
OK, thanks for the tip: I’ll go see if that discount’s still active