Which is why I always have a basic set of tools, that is nearly the same as my father used to carry on his bicycle. I have seen carpenters with their Vans filled up with the most variety and diversity of toolsets, but couldn’t saw a 2’‘3’’ square by hand, winding up unloading half their truck to accomplish a very basic, simple task.
The analogy goes further, the interface of the Brace tends to work longer than any of the dozens of drill sets I have worn out. The point is: How much tools do you really need to accomplish a task? And, more important: Do you want to do all specialized tasks your self and become “Jack of all trades, master of none”?
5 Likes
Yes, it is a religious thing if 14 years of constructive criticism does not give you what one wants but still keeps pointing to a feature that does not works how they want it to work. It should be obvious by then that It is not gonna happen ever!
At first, I was triggered by the simplicity of the program, then became obsessed by why it kept it’s simplicity and now I love it’s simplicity. I am not a religious type, I tend do do what ‘works’.
1 Like
I’ll approach this question from a 3D printing POV - because the STL plugin was the most popular, it stands to reason that many users are using the app for 3D printing as well.
A Solid Inspector and Fixing tool - if you’re printing the model, it would be nice to know if there are errors, and when possible to automatically fix them.
A Fillet/chamfer plugin would be amazing. Nearly every real-life object has smooth corners…the point of 3D printing is to bring your model into the real world, so having a way to make the model more world-friendly would be very helpful. Fillets also help improve strength and sometimes make the model easier to print.
BTW, great work on updating the online app, I’m impressed with the progress you’ve made and excited to see what’s coming next. 
4 Likes
I agree with you. We should all scrap SketchUp and get our mechanical drawing tools, T-square and drawing board and become a master of drawing. Who needs productivity and efficiency anyway?
Joe…
3 Likes
Had you read my original post, printing was just an example of the long list of things that have never been fixed in SketchUp or LayOut, yet, to quote the president, very, very large resources have been applied to a new, and at this point in time, a tool that is essentially useless, except perhaps for gaining market share in K-12 education.
I don’t expect printing to ever be fixed, and I am very proficient at using the workaround, though I am tired of answering the question for newbies “why doesn’t printing to scale work in SketchUp”.
I am a SketchUp lover too, but I am not a cult follower. Here’s my definition of religion, which is essentially a cult: One who accepts what is wrong simply because the leader says to.
It would be helpful to the SketchUp team if people could provide constructive criticism in this forum without the cult followers feeling they had to protect them.
Joe…
4 Likes
I absolutely agree the print dialog needs some love. LO is a really nice tool for making drawings but sometimes you don’t want a full drawing with dimensions, annotations, title block and stuff, just a quick and dirty print out of your model to use yourself as a reference when in the workshop. I’ve found myself several times sending a model to LO so I can set up a paper size and scale, print, and then close LO without even saving the document. In these cases I agree completely the SU print dialog should be sufficient.
5 Likes
Julia, thanks for saving me from jumping off a bridge. I was beginning to think I was crazy ;<)
Joe…
2 Likes
Glad I don’t have to rely on your and your fathers bike tools to fix anything on my ranch. My father always told me, “Get the right tool for the job.”
3 Likes
@Aerilius You again misinterpret my comments: “You have the right to believe that the code bases are totally without overlap.” I never did say that. I said they were not exactly the same, to refute your earlier contention they were (“there is still only one code-base of SketchUp and two UIs”). Please do not put words in my mouth.
I do believe it would be a waste of time to try and defend Trimble’s stellar reputation in adding 3D functionality to SketchUp. My guess we would be arguing over a rotated rectangle tool and it’s inherent value to 3D modeling in general.
Your efforts in supporting this community are admirable and I thank you for them.
2 Likes
I’ve invested a lot of my time (the last two years of every free moment I’ve had) and effort into developing a couple of plugins for SketchUp. Granted my intended audience is the PRO user by in large but I think SketchUp is really shooting itself in the foot and also negatively impacting its many plugin developers like myself by pushing a web based platform that does not allow for the installation of extensions and is completely missing the Ruby engine.
As far as doing anything productive I have never used a web based app except for the simplest operations. Even email, I still check with Mozilla Thunderbird or Outlook, I can’t stand web mail. Web based apps and the web in general is great for online maps, simple games, news sites, Wikipedia and disseminating information. Name one other major CAD platform that has a significant amount of its users using some sort of web based CAD utility, they don’t exist, and probably for a good reason.
I really think SketchUp and Trimble should reconsider this move. If you push people like myself away, that help make SketchUp more useful, you will lose it all. Yes, your established user base will stay, but its your new incoming user base that will fall off. Without a solid full feature free version the new kids coming up through high school and college will find something else. No one is going to seriously use the web based version, it’s too slow and limited. Other software will spring up to fill the void, and you will slowly loose whatever market share you might already have.
9 Likes
Do not worry about the toolsets i choose and take with me to the job. I use this analogy to let people think about what direction they want ( in this case SketchUp) software to become.
Yes, I am good at sawing, planing and sanding one piece of lumber by hand to fit in a broken window, for example, even when I can use a CNC-machine to profile it. Programming the machine takes longer, though. If I had to make all the windows from scratch, however, I would not even think of making them by myself. That is what I mean with ‘a race to the bottom’ : you can never compete with a specialized frames- and windows company by yourself. Just pass the width and height, order, and wait till they deliver. And if another is company is cheaper, …etc.
I think software is about to undergo the same: soon, every CAD-program would have the same (dis)abilities, totally bloated with features, awaiting to let the design being taken over by the computer itself.Just pass the volume needed or square footage : Order a building! (Let the client decide which color the front door is gonna be)
Did you, by chance follow or have seen this (fantastic) thread 
You can follow the becoming of an extension (Yes, within SketchUp) of a ‘Total house builder’ and this is done by a human, imagine wat could be done with a computer:
Anyway, I will not bother you with my analogies anymore as my father would have said: “Get the right people at the job”
I don’t think the introduction of a web based, free version like SU Free and SU for Schools is a bad thing per se. In fact there are a lot of positive things about that. The problem is that they aren’t even close to a replacement for SU Make, so it’s effectively taking away SU Make as a middle range alternative that is the problem. Sorry if I’m a broken record, but what’s needed is for consumers to have some additional choice in between Free and $695. Nikon has almost a dozen DSLR choices ranging from about $400 to about $8,000.
4 Likes
Agree 100% I stopped updating my Adobe apps for this reason.
Joe…
6 Likes
I think you make an excellent point. The web based is no where up to par with the desktop Make, so Trimble is essentially removing their product from the market place. They had three offerings, they now only have two, they want to force you up or down. The problem is that most of the user base is going to be found right in the middle.
Why don’t you start charging a small amount for Make? Say $50 - $150 for a license, any typical middle class income can bite that off, even for casual use.
8 Likes
Exactly correct. It makes no sense at all to come out with something as lame as SketchUp Free and end-of-life Make. We all expected that one day we would have to pay for Make. So keep it in the offering at a price the hobbyist is willing to pay.
On the other hand, if this is a signal that all SketchUp products are headed for the cloud, then they can float away and dissipate like real clouds. I won’t buy them.
Joe…
10 Likes
And the user base will float away too, just like those clouds.
The only people left will be a few relics, like myself, who are either too invested (religious) in the SketchUp platform to make a switch or are too old and just don’t have the energy.
6 Likes
Thank you for your announcement @Caroline .
I have been a Sketchup Pro user for 6 years, and a Sketchup user for 12 years. I do not support the phasing out of Sketchup Make. While nearly everyone welcomed its inclusion, the cloud-based solution is vastly inferior in almost every way.
This will undoubtedly cost Trimble more in users & network effects than it will net them in Pro sales. Unfortunately I can no longer recommend Sketchup to new 3D artists, which I have been doing for 12 years.
10 Likes
it seems there are a few people not reading the thread before commenting…
I think the ‘mistake’ made was keeping ‘2017’ as part of the name…
if the SketchUp Make continued to be available, without any of the existing or future ‘Pro’ only features, a lot of the negative responses seen here would have been averted…
so…
reduce the number of SketchUp Make versions en-US only…
do not ‘ship’ a trial in it…
only update for ‘Breaking Changes’ i.e. a new version of Ruby or a new render pipeline…
make ‘SU Free’ so usable that the majority of non commercial users never need SketchUp Make…
john
2 Likes
I think I can read between the lines. Trimble is wanting to squeeze more of the casual-pro users into upgrading to a Pro license by eliminating the gravy train known as Make. The vast majority of the customer base is probably Make users with a small percentage of Pro (paying) customers. To make SketchUp viable they need a larger volume of paying customers, I get it, I have the same problem with my own plugin income, the volume is too low.
The problem is that in order to charge a Pro price you really need to offer a full fledged “Pro” product. This is where I feel that SketchUp has let itself and its user base down. Only recently has layout become a more serious tool. Without the ability to seamlessly produce production drawings (the real world product of designers and engineers) SketchUp is merely a conceptual tool that no one takes too seriously.
The reason the Pro user base is too small is because it is not full featured enough. The solution is to beef up Pro even more so it can really compete in the marketplace against the big boys. A better product will draw more customers, build it and they will come, as they say. Trying to squeeze your customer base is never a great idea, its only a road to a slow demise.
5 Likes
I have a slightly different view. I think what most people love about SketchUp are its simplicity and its huge extension base. While I think there is plenty of room for improvements in the integration (seamlessness) of LayOut and SketchUp, I wouldn’t want to see a huge amount of complex 3D functionality built into SketchUp. As it is, users can customize SketchUp with their choice of extensions while not being burdened with an application which has so much functionality they find unnecessary.
I completely understand why Trimble needs revenue for its products; a free SketchUp Make is long past unaffordable for Trimble. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Charge a reasonable price for Make that the hobbyist can afford.
The problem with the path Trimble is currently on is that they have officially said that Make will no longer be developed, merely made available, and they have replaced the product with something that is useless without extensions. Further, the cloud model is simply wrong for: a) 3D modeling and b) people who work from home and may only have DSL or no internet at all. Further, 3D modeling in the cloud will never reach this state:
I believe, once the user base becomes fully aware of the road-map Trimble is pursuing, there will be a movement to another 3D application.
It would be nice to hear from Trimble on their rationale for this road-map.
Joe…
8 Likes