What’s up with SketchUp Make?

Would you like to learn how to fill out a profile? It’s free.

What’s the purpose of a profile? Why would I want to do that?

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If SketchUp Make 2017 is working fine for you today, there’s no reason to expect that it won’t work tomorrow. We see lots of regular usage of older SketchUp versions, going back at least as far as SketchUp 6. Even though SketchUp 6 (our very first ‘free’ version) was last updated over a decade ago, there are still 6-8k people who run it every day. That is a very small, but also very determined, cohort of SketchUp users.

SketchUp Make 2017 will run on your computer until you make some change to your computer that causes it to become incompatible. If you are careful not to introduce incompatibility into your system through major upgrades to hardware or operating system, you can likely run SketchUp Make 2017 forever.

On the other hand, if you choose to buy a new computer someday, we are committed to having a version of SketchUp ready to run for you there as well. Access to extensions notwithstanding (spoiler: that’s why SketchUp Make 2017 is still available to download) I think SketchUp for Web has plenty of advantages over our traditional desktop client applications. And it is getting better all the time.

john
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I hear you, and we do take this into consideration. Trimble takes a world-wide view and we are keen to provide access to our tools in every part of the world that we can.

Remember, you still have access to SketchUp Make 2017, which works well offline. Of course, you have to be able to download it to your computer in the first place, and that can be tough if you have limited bandwidth.

SketchUp for Web, on the other hand, requires much less bandwidth than you think. The initial application load (which is a kind of download, though invisible to you) is really the most bandwidth-intensive part of using SketchUp for Web. Once you have loaded the application in your browser, you don’t *really *have to touch the internet again until you open a model from or save a model to Trimble Connect. The “sketchup” application itself is cached locally and running on your computer’s hardware.

Of course, services like 3D Warehouse and Add Location will require an internet connection in both SketchUp for Web and our desktop client applications. That’s the same requirement either way.

I would probably argue that if you have enough bandwidth to participate in this forum, you have enough to run SketchUp for Web. Your experience may vary, of course, depending on the vagaries of your local internet connection.

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Usually only two major versions are available for download on the SketchUp website, but should I interpret this as SketchUp 2017 Make staying available after SketchUp Pro 2020 is released? I’d be very happy if this was the case :+1: .

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“If SketchUp Make 2017 is working fine for you today, there’s no reason to expect that it won’t work tomorrow.” I’m sure that John’s statement about compatibility of Make 2017 and compatibility with my computer is true. However, I have no control over updates which Microsoft or Apple might make to their operating systems. In the past, an update will change something that is necessary for a specific application, thus making that application not run.

" On the other hand, if you choose to buy a new computer someday, we are committed to having a version of SketchUp ready to run for you there as well." I assume that this means the current internet accessible version of Sketchup? Correct? Just to be clear,… Sketchup Make 2017 will not be updated from this point forward. Correct?

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That’s correct.

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Yes, that was already said.

With today’s technology it is possible to keep old software functional and accessible, even if it means preserving the hardware and keeping the operating system unchanged (or using a frozen old OS version in a virtualized environment that can be streamed to users over the internet).

This helps for software archiving. While a free human can take control on which updates his hardware receives and which not (yes, you can), it is impractical for consumers who want to keep their main working environment going with latest technology. In short that means users have to accept that SketchUp Make will fade away.

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The forum profile is a reference to your hardware and software environment aiding other forum participants and sages to help you resolve problems you might have in using SU should the need ever arise.

I think that’s precisely what he’s talking about. He is hoping to be able to keep using the software in the event that the computer is updated down the line, for whatever reason. It’s pretty fair too, considering at some point, all computers are eventually upgraded (by choice or not). I suppose he could keep an old computer running JUST to keep running Make, but that is not an ideal situation for the user, as you can imagine. It might be seen as wishful thinking to expect Make 2017 to run on a newer machine, considering Trimble has basically said it’s not touching it ever again, but his argument is still more than valid.

SketchUp 3.1 runs just fine on my Windows 10 machine. It was released in 2004, eleven years before Windows 10 was first released.

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It also appears that what ever was causing the issues with some integrated graphics (at least on my machine) on widows 10 machines necessitating reboots following updates has been resolved.

Very cool. I hope that is also the case moving forward with Make 2017.
I haven’t been as lucky on MacOS with older versions of SketchUp Pro, though.

May be interested. What do I do to complete my profile?

I’ve already accepted that but some answers made that less clear. I still believe that profit is the only motive for the annual upgrade fees for use of software that works well to begin with. I’m resigned to just using Sketchup till I can’t. I find tha keeping it longer is not a reason to avoid regular computer system upgrades to the op system. For my use I’m sure I will be able to find something that works and isn’t so expensive it doesn’t make sense for me as Sketchup has become.

Those folks I mentioned who are still running SketchUp 6, despite a decade of system updates, hardware obsolescences and truly fundamental shifts in the way computing infrastructure works… have somehow figured out how to keep the version of SketchUp they like best running for a pretty long time. I don’t think it is necessarily the case that computers ‘naturally’ become incapable of running older versions of software.

Just to see if I still could, I loaded up my old NeXTSTEP environment (via VirtualBox) to see how it runs on my new Mac Mini with a 5K (OMG!) display. It is amusingly small on this big high resolution screen, but it is actually more responsive than the original was on my 68040 NeXTCUBE. Happily, drawing applications have improved somewhat (as a class) since 1995.

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In the upper right hand corner of the forum window click on your profile photo (in your case it would be the “G”) . In the window below that which opens is the “gear” settings icon for preferences. Click on that. The Preferences page opens and on the left is a list of sections, second one from the top is “profile” click on that and fill in all the boxes.

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Michael,

I did view the Profile section, but I’m not sure how that would provide any useful information to assist me if I need it with Sketchup. I found no place that would allow me to enter the 2 computers I am able to use Sketchup on right now; only the last computer I used on the forum (which isn’t descriptive of what I would used for Sketchup).

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Happy trails.

As a lifelong construction person and business owner, while I understand the endeavor and argument to purport web based solutions for construction sites and mobile, in actuality, the platform is glitchy and often cannot be accessed as easily as web providers would like to believe. Having a desktop version of Sketchup Make continually upgraded is much more robust for the CAD platform than a web based product. A client based system with redundant cloud backup when available, is the best technology solution available today and in the foreseeable future.

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