If the license allowed commercial use I think it would. You don’t buy Pro for the extra features; you buy it to be able to use it for work.
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Correct.
Trimble has, in effect, removed the only good springboard to Sketchup Pro.
The top product strategy decision makers at Trimble Sketchup ought to take a long hard look at the user response to removing beginners’ sole desktop gateway to Pro. It is one year in. We have read the user response.
Executive summary: Users can contain their enthusiasm.
By themselves, web versions can be a good thing. So what’s the problem?
The problem is – that the web versions continually sever the link between newcomers and professionals. This flourishing connection was one of the things that made Sketchup great. New users will not find their way to a depreciated Make. Stopping development of Make while not substituting it with some middle ground desktop version – that is the problem.
What Sketchup needs is a desktop way to ease the transition to Pro. With extensionability and performance intact. Be it zero-cost, low-cost, or low-cost with 99 days full trial.
Thank you!
This very trusted and valued segment of the Sketchup community is left with a growing gulf between a perhaps large user base for the web version, and us. Commercial licensing notwithstanding, the web versions cannot be used professionally even for a start.
Why? The web versions:
• crash and burn by heavy geometry
• lack support of existing extensions
• eschew desktop UI conventions
• are so slow that they are outrun by my garden snail’s grandmother
Installation-less software can still install something. Into web newcomers – it installs a psychological bar to proceeding to desktop. Into the Pro and developer user base – it installs the sense of being subtly marooned. We can no longer help new users grow fond of, develop for, and transition to Pro. Simply because the websters are using another program.
We gaze into this growing Sketchup gulf – and the growing gulf also gazes into us.
I have worked with Sketchup every day for years and now use Pro professionally. I would never be here had it not been for Make. No Pro is an island.
∴ Make Make great again
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Make Make great again, I like it… MMGA!
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I 100% agree with Jbacus
I got started using the prior to “make” editions. I had lots of extensions and mods to make the program work for me and help me over time learn the program better. At one point my company ordered around 7 pro versions to have me start training others for large layout ideas in production. This Browser version is just terrible at best and unstable with most medium size designs now.
I got started by getting familiar over the course of a year, using it on and off . I did this until I was able to finally have enough knowledge and confidence to make a model or 2 of the production lines to show to management that the program is worth buying by showing what it can do for us. We / I never would have looked at it if it had the functionality it has today. Its so limited and featureless that it can’t be used to do more than a kids school modeling project.
Let me give you an example. Make a simple room and try importing a few designs from the warehouse files. Thats where youll stop. because its to much for the browser. If it does work, its super slow. So before I left my last company I told them to cancel the current Pro-versions and I’ll find a new program to work with going forward…since new people are not going to be trained on one of the 7 pro-versions we have. Its sad to because they had a lot of floor design drawings I went and deleted because of that…
I also think that the decision was a low blow to people that have spent YEARS building stuff for the 3D Warehouse of theirs. These models severed 2 purposes. 1- to allow many items for importing to be created in high detail and 2- as a selling point for Trimble to say "hey…look at all these community creations available to choose from. Yes they did not have a paid version but they created stuff so those with them have a better program with more options now.
This goes for the Extensions also. All these great extension that were made are now useless in The WEB version. Sorry these extension made this program so much more powerful than in its stock version.
We all get the need to make a profit concept …BUT you should have done it a different way than the way you executed this roll out to make it more profitable.or get people to buy your pro version. Maybe offer Rendering or better materials,or different in-program testing simulations…
SO DISAPPOINTED IN TRIMBLE 
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Pro and Make still have the same functionality!
Who says that pro is going to be discontinued in the near future?
I use Make for hobby purposes and it still works and will probably for many years!
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You probably shouldn’t be using the web version for commercial work. Since your company has 7 Pro licenses, you should just use those.
I would have you prosecuted for theft of company assets…
you have no idea what the future holds or how valuable any asset may become…
john
REALLY? you thought i maliciously did that -NOT maliciously deleted them. We had no use for them after we decided to pitch the program and I just rebuilt the data in another program we decided to move to
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Just so you know… Currently Pro licenses never expire. They come with one year of free upgrades, but the license itself is perpetual.
I probably wouldn’t have ditched $4,865 dollars worth (7 X $695) of software that still had a valid license, but that’s your choice.
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So you destroyed a bunch of SketchUp files made by your company because development of SketchUp Make was discontinued? And that discontinuation affected you how? Unless you were using Make for commercial purposes, which means you were violating the license agreement, there’d be absolutely no impact on you.
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When It came to teaching new people or trying to get them to see if they like doing that type of work to start with they were not going to buy a new license for each person. We would give them some things to try to tinker with or trial tasks that played to their hobbies at home to attempt to try at home on their time if they were interested. if they liked it then we would buy the program for them. Hence the 7 license we had at that point. We then had 2 leave and I was the point person that eventually left/planning to leave in a few months and I made the call to toss the program being that they didnt like the changes that came down the pipeline from Trimble and I wasnt going to revamp the way things were going to need to be done to address them either.
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There’s a 30-day trial period of the pro version. No need to use Make for that.
I found minimal use for the basic or even pro version features. The Make version 2017 allowed extensions and other stuff I couldnt get with the browser version and dont feel I should pay to be able to use extensions that were free to add. kind of dumb. There was also grumblings that a subscription service was coming on a yearly basis and that was the final straw for my last place of work. I know they moved to something recently but not sure what program it is. I’ll have to ask next time I talk to people there.From what I hear, they like it a lot more than Sketchup. Kinda sad since I helped them launch the sketchup but I guess out with the old in with the new. I wish them all the best
So now it comes out. You were using SketchUp Make for commercial use. Make is not licensed for commercial use so you were violating the agreement you enter into. No sympathy here for you, then.
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what I find most interesting in the responses back to me so far is the focus on licenses and nothing on any other point really except 1 person… For those more worried about being Trimbles Police Watch dog…I HAD 7 PRO VERSIONS (READ THE MESSAGES FOR ONCE)
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OH please already…what ever the stupid 2017 pro version was called MAKE or PRO or whatever. Hell, I usually still refer to it as Google Sketchup a lot of times. And it was useful to have when sending people home to try stuff to seek out interest in doing this type work, to list a few extensions they could try that were highly suggested to use. Some of the community members I thought made better features than the programers for Sketchup.
Wait a minute aren’t you the one that goes by TOMTOM or something close like that in the community area (an extension developer)
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as for the Browser version now. It s performance is dismal at best
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A lot of us are not overly enthusiastic about the hobby version moving to the web. The desktop version is simply put superior in every way (except that it cannot run on Chromebooks and other almost-computers).
However I’m not sure how this change affects the ability to use Pro. Yes, we can feel sorry for all the kids and hobbyists that don’t get the chance to play with Make, but I can’t see how professional use is affected. Also SketchUp 2017 Make is still available if you want people to pick it up for hobby use and learn it at home. SketchUp 2017 is as good today as it was when released (at least on PC where backward compatibility is good).
Dave and ThomThom are different people btw (even though Dave’s profile picture features ThomThom’s legendary bowler hat).
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I’m not with that company anymore anyway and the specific details are foggy at this point at best by now. Oh thank you on ThomThom note…I thought it was him after seeing that
No, Thomthom has passed on the hat (but still develops for SketchUp).
That’s not really fair, considering that SketchUp does not even run on every real computer system (“PC”). And the vast majority of the worlds’s population know only mobile devices as “computers” and historians may once consider everything before was the preceding evolutionary step in the history of computing.
The comparison of digital things and physical things is tricky:
For physical products the customer can always disassemble them and analyze their matter (even with a raster electron microscope) and in theory repair them (with little or high effort).
By contrast, digital products do not consist of matter und are thus easily copyable without effort (sin), but their binary representation cannot be disassembled to understandable source code. Also what is better than with cars, they do not suddenly change and break or degrade over time, it’s the environment that changes and breaks them. So you could keep SketchUp Make 2017 running up to infinity if you keep the environment frozen.
The real problem is that the extension environment is given new possibilities with every version (2018 has already some unique API features). If extensions want to make use of new API features, they won’t work for SketchUp Make 2017 users.