You don’t always have the choice. If you buy new hardware either by choice or because your old hardware failed, you can end up with the software no longer working. When Apple moved to Intel, so did I because of hardware failure and old software that didn’t get updates was gone.
Sometimes I want to update and SketchUp might not be the most important software I use, I might have to upgrade to get other software I use to work.
Might I ask, as I pay for pro and am in a different use case, what do ‘home users’ and ‘hoobbysists’ use this for, where they need access to the thousands of models on the warehouse, and where having the most up to date (2018) version is so important?
I am an avid hobbyist, mainly drawing spaceships or other scifi work. I use the 3D warehouse to download odd random components so I don’t have to waste time making them myself. For example in this model the fuel tanks are actually Disney Epcot Spheres: https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/008/478/098/large/liam-keating-linear-fusion.jpg?1513038950
For this TV I downloaded the screws in the side:
https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/007/469/977/original/liam-keating-tv3.gif?1506359297
For this drone I downloaded the ammo drum and belt: https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/007/262/787/large/liam-keating-swedish-af.jpg?1504864592
I have Pro on my PC for work and I have Make on my laptop for fun. My hobby work takes place with me lying on my couch in front of the fire and I don’t render any of my fun stuff so the laptop can handle most things. If I did not need Pro for work (mainly because of the importers & exporters) I would just stick with Make, however the 3D warehouse is a great resource for random bits and pieces.
Keeping Make 2015 or 2016 might be an even more future-proof solution as they are the last SketchUp releases that can work without OpenGL Hardware Acceleration. This is where most of the problems with new OS or driver versions tend to arise.
Thanks. I generally don’t trust much in the warehouse except for a handful of models I’ve downloaded, cleaned up and made (repetitive) use of.
Yes that is mostly the case, however my output (even for work) is illustration so file size and accuracy/reverse faces/internal geometry is no concern for me luckily.
I understand the frustration with how fast tech can change the tools we use, but I find it unreasonable that we should demand SketchUp offer a product, for free, that magically updates into the future based on OS or hardware changes that they have no control over. In this case, moving to the web is a smart move - update the code on the server to work with a range of standards, and the product keeps working. And no one paid a dime for it… (aside from Trimble developing, hosting, etc. etc.)
In my work, this free for me model would not work:
“Mike, we know the house is already designed, the engineering done, and all the documents filed, but we decided to have 2 kids, have my parents move into an in-law suite, buy 2 new cars that need a garage, and my mom rides horses - so we need a barn designed. Let me know when you get those changes made. And don’t bother to send me a bill, because we can’t / won’t / don’t want to pay for these changes because we already paid you for the design that is finished and you should provide that to us because we are just simple homeowner hobbyist people who need a house…”
This all reminds me of what Grand Pappy once told me.
During the dirty thirties there was this farming family with kids that were having trouble putting food on the table. This other fellow felt bad for them and so every morning when it was still dark out he’d drop by the farmhouse and leave a couple of loaves of fresh bread on the porch.
This continued for months and months and then one day he stopped leaving the gift of bread. A few hrs later the farmer showed up at the good Samaritan’s house, knocked on the door, and asked where his bread was.
Not everybody who uses Sketchup make or Free is ungrateful !
Think about all the great things that are given for free, like charity ,open source software, Wikipedia, a.s.o .
Not everybody in the world can (or is able) to show there gratitude by donating.
Do not let them who are ungrateful, or misusing generous free giving, let you change your attitude.
No one should complain about not having a free version anymore. However, those of you who make money by selling extensions or by using Sketchup seem to be missing the real point, i.e., there is only the top end, great version that Sketchup Pro has always been, and the now cloud version that no one seems to like. The code is written. There would be very little effort to strip out X percentage of the program that professionals need and sell it to the rest of us hobbyists for $150 or $200. Yeah, you can download earlier versions, but clearly that will come to an end eventually. Many other software design programs come in several iterations, each more costly based on what the capabilities are. Why Trimble has missed this point is beyond me. We’re talking millions of dollars in missed revenue potential here. The lower end versions need not be provided with support, either. That could be by subscription for those who choose to avail themselves of it.
Not true! Have you ever heard the marketing strategy called Loss Leader? See attached image.
SketchUp Make was not done out of the goodness of Google’s heart. It was done for marketing purposes, specifically to generate more profitable sales. And that is exactly what happended. Make user spread the word and convinced their employers to use it. It is not true that because Make users didn’t pay for it that the company didn’t make money off of them. They did, just indirectly. And many Make users became Pro users. SketchUp has always been a business, not a charity. Get over the notion that it was a generous act on the part of some philanthropist . Make users were used.
Joe…
Yes, Joe, I’m well aware of loss leaders. Many years spent in retail. Loss leaders are not given away for free. Loss leaders don’t pay the labor costs or keep the lights on. Loss leaders are offered with the expectation that those people will buy other merchandise from the retailer. Those who only take the free stuff are not customers.
You are worried about losing your income from selling your SketchUp related stuff. Are you paying a percentage of your sales to Trimble?
No. That wasn’t the reason for Google offering a free version of SketchUp. They released the free version with the expectation that users would draw 3D buildings to populate Google Earth. Not enough users did that, however and Google shifted to other technologies to replace SketchUp for the creation of 3D content in GE. If Trimble hadn’t bought it, SketchUp would have gone the way of many other applications that Google purchased and killed. It was already languishing before Trimble came along.
I completely agree.
Why should a trial be restricted to evaluating? There would be no harm letting a firm check, with one or even 3 projects (how many can a firm do in 60 or 90 days?) that it is worth training the staff and changing their workflow. I mean this is a big decision to make. More often than not, there is more than one person involved. It takes time.
The goal is to get them to adopt SU for ALL (countless) following projects !!
Loss leaders can and often are sold for free. I too have spent many years in business and as an executive been responsible for product and business development. It is not uncommon to give away product to build a business.
As for my concern about income from SketchUp related stuff, I am retired and have do quite well on my retirement savings, pension and investments, Thank you very much. I do sell SketchUp related stuff, but primarily as a hobby. And I do pay a percentage to Trimble and others such as Popular Woodworking, though it is none of your business.
My point exactly. Companies do not give away product without expectations of growing another part of their business. Google may not have been successful but their intent was obvious. And if you believe for a minute that the SketchUp team didn’t have expectations that it would grow the Pro business you are very naive.
SketchUp Make made SketchUp. Without it the Pro would never have taken off.
What I don’t understand is why you and people on the SketchUp team take constructive criticism of the decision to drop SketchUp Make and replace it with a crippled SketchUp Free so personally. It’s not a personal attack. It is constructive and mostly well-meaning feedback.
Joe…
I’m not on the SketchUp team. I’m a satisfied customer.
Whooops! I intended to reply to the following quote by Dave Lukasek.
Well said. I am as dumbfounded as you as to why this pont is not understood by Trimble and the SketchUp team.
Joe…
I think it is a matter of disagreeing rather than not understanding. The idea of charging a modest fee for SketchUp Make has been raised by users enough times in past years that I can’t believe Trimble does not understand it. Rather, somebody there either doesn’t believe it or is actively opposed.
Either way it is hard to understand. I don’t have any data, but my gut tells me that the ratio of Make to Pro users is fairly substantial; 10 to 1? I don’t know. But if you get a fraction of those customers paying $50 - $200 for SketchUp Make 2018 and beyond pretty soon that is real money.
Joe…
I do have an opinion on this (about abandoning the Make version towards the free web version) which I’m not going to share here. What I question is: can you sell a Make version with the restriction that it may not be used commercially, to make any profit? Once the “real customer” pays, isn’t he/she allowed to make money of the models created with it? If so, I suppose that wouldn’t do Trimble much good.
I’ve said this many times but what you pay for with Pro isn’t some extra features, it’s the right toe earn money from using SU. If there was a version with the same features as Make that could be used professionally for a cheaper prize I’d assume Trimble lose money because people would use it instead of Pro. Some professional users desperately need the Pro only features, some do not. If the license prohibited people from using it commercially I think a lot of people would do anyway, way more than uses Make commercially today, because a lot of people wouldn’t accept they can’t use a software commercially after paying for it.
Also, it’s expensive to develop several versions of the same software. Sure, a lot of the work could be re-used but then there are things like testing that would need a lot of extra work.
I will happily admit that I am not a lawyer. But I doubt there is anything legally preventing a company from restricting its product for commercial use in a license agreement, whether they charge for that product or not. There is no requirement that a customer buys a product, but if they do, they do so by accepting the terms of the license.
It would be interesting to hear from a lawyer with knowledge of this area.
The restriction that the Make couldn’t be used for commercial use is fairly recent. I don’t remember the exact version, but it was somewhere around 2015. Before that you could use either version for commercial use. Yet many people still purchased the Pro.
The Pro does have a number of useful, additional features, needed for commercial use. One is LayOut, necessary and used widely in architecture for example. Other features are the broader support for import and export of files, and the solids tools.
It for sure requires more resources to support different versions, but like anything else in business, you price your products to generate a profit. If SketchUp was profitable before 2018 with both Make and Pro, they certainly would be more profitable post-2018 if they charged a reasonable price for Make and had two versions in their product line. I have to believe that Make and Pro were much closer in sharing code than SketchUp Free and SketchUp Pro. So if anything, they went from bad to worse on that score.
Multiple products in a product line is something every business does, and find it necessary in order to maximize revenue. Just look at AutoCAD and TurboCAD. So I see no reason not to continue with Make at a reasonable cost, and they can further increase the functionality differences over time.
Joe…
