I doubt that. In the past there have been surveys done asking users what kind of fee they’d pay for a lower level license. The majority of Make users who responded said they wouldn’t be willing to pay anything for it. I expect we’d see the same sort of complaining if the announcement had been that Make was no longer going to be free but instead there’d a $100 dollar licensing fee for it.
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I don’t completely disagree with you, but I am not a stakeholder in SketchUp Development. Perhaps organizing around this idea and presenting it to the company would be worthwhile…
From the 3 pro users that I know, they are using content from make users (2 networking gear and 1 hmm I don’t know what he does (i’m just saying that to annoy him), not manufacturers, I didn’t know anything about what Dribbles ehr sorry … Trimble are doing until they taunted me this evening,I will have the last laugh now, i’m forgetting my wallet when we go to the pub on Friday!
I love the easy 3d modelling with SketchUp. I use it most in combination with Match Photo. This feature in SketchUp is very, very good (With proper photos / images!). I use SketchUp (now SketchUp Make 2015) pure for hobby. Trimble, Google, SketchUp Team, thank you for al those years you let me use your software.
Medeek, now to your $99 for a copy of make. I think it is a reasonable price. But…
SketchUp 8 (free) still works on my computer. SketchUp 2015 Make still works on my computer. So why should I pay?
The $99 will only be interesting if there are big new features. For example: I would pay $99 immediately if the Match Photo functionality would be extended. In al those years I saw one nice improvement in Match Photo, the Photo Point Tool. With proper made and lens corrected photos, this works fine.
I dreamt about Match Photo, working with cropped images. But then there must be the possibility to use two new blue vanishing point bars for the 3th vanishing point. This would be very useful.
I dreamt about a possibillity to use images with one point perspective.
Maybe this kind of wishes are not easy to fulfil. Perhaps there are very good reasons that it is still not implemented, because perspective isn’t an easy subject matter.
The Match Photo as it is now, forces you to use well made and lens corrected photos. Maybe that’s a good thing too.
I dream about the possibility to use Match Photo with 360° panoramas.
Then I would pay $99 straightaway.
I never can afford to pay the full price for a Pro version, because it is just a hobby.
I here give the example with the Match Photo tool. Other people have other dreams and wishes. I think people want to pay for “SketchUp Lite” if (some) of these wishes are fulfilled.
Maybe SketchUp Pro Users will be happy also with new functionality?
DaveR:
You may be right in saying the majority of users would not pay for it. I agree, if I was surveyed, I would probably say I wouldn’t want to pay anything for it. But in the real world, if I really could use it, I would quickly pay for it. After all, I have been paying for AutoCAD since 1984! Maybe SketchUp.Live (the educational “toy” as someone called it) would suffice for the hobbyist. But for the more serious, if one in ten would pay $100 for a copy, that would be $100 more than Trimble is earning now. Extrapolate that for 1,000 users, or 10,000 users or what ever. As Erick Dirksen (I think) said, “A billion here, a billion there, and soon we are going to be talking about real money.”
I’ve been around for a long time but I’ve not heard of that version. Tell me more.
I expect there was a great deal of discussion about this at Trimble. If they’d thought there was benefit in selling a lite version of SketchUp, I imagine they’d have gone that way. It seems there are a lot of people who don’t have all of the information about the decisions that were made who feel they are qualified to pass judgment.
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Just curious, Arch, what do you think of Autodesk’s decision to only offer subscription licensing for AutoCAD? That was and is an immediate dealbreaker for me ever buying inventor. As I stated in my previous post I bit the bullet and bought SketchUp pro partially because it is a perpetual license and who knows how long that will last?! Maybe I’m cutting Trimble a bit of slack because I half expected them to go subscription like the other guys…
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I think it is time for a grassroots movement from within the SketchUp community.
I am proposing that SketchUp continue to offer SketchUp Make for personal or non-professional use, but rather than free, charge a fair and equitable price to license it’s usage.
If you agree with this proposal please like this post. If we can get enough likes we may be able to take this proposal to the Trimble and SketchUp management and open up a dialogue.
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Patrick:
I began to be disenchanted with Autodesk around 1990. I was one of the earlier national AutoCAD dealers and was the only dealer in Mississippi for several years. They required a registered architect or engineer to be an active employee or owner, before you could qualify for a dealership. As an architect I qualified. Shortly after we (partner and I) became dealers, I began to learn that several of the people we gave CAD demonstrations to, were now my competition. Not only did they not have and engineer or architect on board, they had no construction background, and didn’t know how to install the software, much less run it. We ended up supporting a number of professionals around the State that bought the software from others, which was not profitable. So I left the business feeling Autodesk had betrayed us and their own requirements for all potential dealers. Since then I have seen Autodesk push, pull, stretch and twist, in an attempt to control their software while ever increasing the cost.
The difference I see between Autodesk and SketchUp, is AutoCAD has evolved with significant new features, provided many ways to customize the system, increased speed, and added more capabilities. (When I first started out in 1984, AutoCAD didn’t even have the grips feature, consequently you couldn’t accurately grab anything, including dimension points!) I don’t see that kind of development in SketchUp, however, I have only used SketchUp for 4-5 years. Still, I am astounded that you cannot “Print” a drawing in SketchUp simply, without jumping through vague hoops. I couldn’t believe the main menu did not have a “Print” icon and worse, still doesn’t. Makes you wonder what the developer thinks the user is going to do with the finished model.
I will not go to subscription on the newer version of AutoCAD, but might renew my single seat of AutoCAD. (I forget what the proper Autodesk term is for a non-subscription single seat.) I have until the 6th of December to decide. It will be somewhat sad if that happens, since I used it daily for over 30 years. (I retired a few years ago and currently do some residential work out of my home studio just for the fun of it, with my highly customized system.)
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I would agree if Tremble would commit to developing the program in the future. For example, they should have been on top of the SELECTION TOOL problem with a fix immediately, or at least a workaround. I don’t care if the problem is Tremble, Microsoft, or another company. Instead, they announce that they are abandoning SketchUp Make, which leaves every Make user in limbo. Who wants to pay big bucks for lame software? This reflects badly on their attempt to enter a new kind of technology, when the base program is so in need of refinement. Also, with all the problems facing their conversion to the Cloud, I would need to be assured the bought software core could be downloaded on my computer and not throttled through the internet.
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Perpetual licences will last forever!
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I think you are right. However, I fear a “Perpetual License” is very temporary. Maybe perpetually expiring before I decide what to do in December.
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Where did Trimble go, or perhaps they didn’t, to learn about marketting? Release a Beta version of a new product and announce in the same breath that it will supersede the existing product, even though it is missing a lot of the functionality of the existing? As well as looking like a tool for introducing primary school kids to play at drawing? Quite a few wrong boxes ticked there.
I’m still using 2016 because of the previous mistake by Trimble of forcing some new Open GL standard on 2017 users. I wonder how long it will be reasonable to keep working around the obstacles Trimble seems to want to put in the way of hobby users like myself? I might add that despite the obviously marvellous products from professional users, and despite the sometimes condescending tone adopted by the Trimble team and others when answering questions from beginners and hobby users, SU is (was?) a marvellous product.
And free for low-level users. But I suppose it will eventually (soon?) go the way of other good products which initially are free, or low cost, and meant for low-level users, then disappear behind a high cost barrier having gathered more functions than a Boeing jet; Toyota Hilux, Tommy CAD, Microsoft Word?
The only upside is that this Beta works a little better, and faster, than the attempt last year. But it’s still only a Beta product and, from the sound of this conversation, will remain so for some time.
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I was playing around with the web based version today just to see what it could do and overall it is pretty impressive what you can do in a browser. I loaded one of my more complex house models in from my plugin and it seemed to handle it reasonably well. So yes, it looks like SketchUp has put a lot of effort into the web based version.
However, without the ability to load of few of my favorite plugins and my own plugins that I have created SketchUp is like a dog with all its teeth knocked out, all bark but no bite, but perhaps this is what was intended.
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This is however irrelevant as most of the content in 3D Warehouse is rubbish and can’t be used for professional work anyway. Having less content made by hobbyists would actually make 3D Warehouse more useful for professionals as it would be easier to find good components.
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So aren’t you tempted to invest some time and give feedback on this free web based application to get it streamlined to your desire? Like many of us did/do on the desktop versions? Only complaining will probably not improve any of SketchUp’s products.
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DaveR, when I ask my guests if they want coffee or water, 80% of the time they say ‘no, thanks’ but if I just put water or coffee in front of them they are happy to receive it.
Asking someone if they’d pay and putting the option before them are two very different things, psychologically speaking.
If you saw a donate button every time you launched sketchup you’d be far more likely to toss them $5 or $10 from time to time when you were feeling really appreciative, and so would we all.
I tried to find a quote from Larry Wall in response to someone’s observation on using elsif in a conditional Perl structure, but I can’t find it. So, to paraphrase, “If you don’t like using elsif, just write your own language and make it anything you want it to be.”
I currently use SketchUp 8 and 2015/2016/2017 Make. To be perfectly honest, I keep 8 around due to its liberal licensing policy. Technically speaking, I don’t really need SketchUp for anything, but I have a lot fun playing around with various Ruby scripts. 35 years ago, I had a CAD system that would pretty much do anything, However, it didn’t natively do spirals or helixes. Fortunately, it had a “plugin” interface to a programming language (DAL) that allowed you to add anything you wanted simply by writing some code and supplying it with data. Diving deeper, you could add a helical surface definition in FORTRAN and integrate the callbacks with the internal modules as if the surface had always been included.
When I first started using SketchUp in 2010, I found it ironic that it didn’t natively do spirals or helixes. I’ve had a lot of fun creating various Ruby scripts that create geometry in SketchUp and will miss this ability to add functionality to a really nice product. Inasmuch as SketchUp is a hobby for me, in and of itself, I have a hard time justifying the cost of a Pro license just to have a local platform to play with.
I’ve seen a lot of products go the route from a free toy to a not-so-free wonder (remember Netscape?), but quality requires a dedicated team to continue supporting a veritable cornucopia of platforms and configurations. Moving into the cloud eliminates a lot of that overhead. It’s still free, but with a little less functionality. As a business owner for 20 years, it’s a tough call to find the right pricing structure. If you don’t make enough money, your company will no longer be able to supply any products at all. If you don’t like what Trimble is doing with their product, then you’re free to make your own 
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Pulling the plug on SketchUp Make and leaving your user base—comprised of actual people—out to dry was an utterly dick move for which this backlash is a natural and warranted consequence.
I don’t know what your data says, Trimble, but I can tell you that I LOVE to support the apps that I love, and I BRISTLE when forced into something I didn’t agree to. I donate to Wikipedia. I donate to shareware apps and to my favorite blogs because they provide great value and a simple and easy way to make small payments and because supporting them feels great and because I AM FREE TO DO SO.
Did it never occur to your hive mind that free users might be CLAMOURING to offer some support but have never been given the means to do so on reasonable terms? I can’t believe you decided to take it to the nth degree before trying something like this:
You’re actively screwing the pooch on this one, Trimble, but it’s not too late to make things right.
A good way to start is by treating your user base like people.
Best,
H
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[tongue planted firmly in cheek] Why not have popup ads and trackers like all the web sites are currently doing to generate revenue? [cleaning vomit from keyboard]
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