Updates, please make them seamless

My pals at Sketchup,

I have been using Sketchup for a couple of decades (as far back when Google owned it). I have been a “pro” user for a long time. I have become fairly proficient over the years. My use has always been for private use (my area of interests has been primarily woodworking, but on a few occasions, I have modeled a house or my yard in anticipation of a new pool or other such things). I use the application on a weekly basis. I really like what it allows me to do. I almost never attempt to build something without modeling it first. Thanks for providing such a powerful application.

I am sure you have likely seen a “butt” coming. Well yes, here they come.

Two areas; A) updates loses my extensions, my preferences, other things and B) The pricing system doesn’t seem to accommodate folks like me.

As for “B”, I understand there is a free web version. However, it is very limited. Perhaps you might consider a discounted paid version for “non-power users”. This is really not my big gripe.

The Butt is; “A”, updates. I find it astonishing for a high-end subscription based “software provider” to handle them so poorly. Although updates are indeed timely and often, they interrupt the users “workflow”. I don’t understand why “all is lost” on every “update”. You can do amazing things in 3D space but, you cannot handle an update without creating havoc for your loyal user community. Users download (and often pay for) extensions, materials, textures, components, etc. And you guys can’t figure out how to maintain them easily. At about $25/month in subscription costs, is that too much to ask.

Everyone appreciates new features and easier modeling (and cool tech). Most users want the latest and greatest version, but at what cost? All I ask is that you find a way to make them more seamless as I would think most of your users are not programmers or IT professionals.

Thanks for listening, I appreciate your consideration.

John Newton

j.newton452@gmail.com

(973) 479-1912

Please remove your personal information from your post, unless you like spambots harvesting it to send you unsolicited advertising. Plus, it is against the forum guidelines.

Updates don’t lose your extensions or preferences. Version upgrades lose your extensions but your shortcuts are transferred. SketchUp does not take responsibility of the compatibility of your third party extensions with a new version of the software that more often than not also brings changes to the Ruby framework. A malfunctioning old extension can prevent SketchUp from starting up. If you feel adventurous, you can copy the contents of your old extension folder yourself over to the new version.

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It’s not a huge issue for me, but rebuilding my window interface setup from scratch each major update is really annoying, and I wish it wasn’t necessary either, especially for pro software. Every other piece of pro software I use preserves far more user prefs than sketchup and in a lot of ways sketchup still looks and behaves like software in its infancy in comparison.