What’s up with SketchUp Make?

I spent a few hours yesterday on SketchUp Free. I have a few questions and observations. Questions first.

  1. Has anyone found a way to print to scale?
  2. Has anyone found a way to edit styles in SketchUp Free?
  3. Has anyone found a way to center a model on a print-out page short of iterating between Print Preview and Pan/Zoom?

Now observations, which may be wrong and I will learn more in future sessions.

Printing in SketchUp Free is a real problem, much worse than SketchUp Make. I uploaded a model from my personal library. To my surprise (pleasant) it brought in and used my styles which I use in all of my models. Then I printed a scene with dimensions. The dimensions, which are very readable when printed from SketchUp make, were not at all readable when printed from SketchUp Free. This wouldn’t be a problem if the styles could be edited in SketchUp Free, but they apparently are not; at least I couldn’t find a way to edit them. Dimensioned drawings that are completely unreadable are useless.

The second problem I experienced is the model, when centered and fully viewable in the window area of SketchUp Free, is dramatically off center in Print Preview, and can actually be off the page. The model seems to be positioned to the right of center and toward the top of the page; though I swear, one time it was to the bottom left, but I couldn’t reproduce it. To get it acceptably centered required iteration of opening the Print Preview dialog box, closing it, adjusting with Pan and/or Zoom and reopening the Print Dialog box. The behavior depends a lot on whether the right side dialog panels are open or not, but the problem exists in either state.

Part of this problem, I believe, has to do with the way Zoom Extents works. If the right dialog panel is open, Zoom Extents does not center the model; it centers it to the same place it would if the panel were closed. But this doesn’t fully explain the problem of centering in the Print Preview page. In fact, Zoom Extents, even with the right pane closed, can position the model partially out of the window. It appears that SketchUp Free does not have an accurate understanding of the window size or position.

By the way, the same partially off page problem exists if you play an animation. I hope to get to some of the more complex tools such as Sections in the next couple of days.

Joe…

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Nothing was said about end-of-life for SketchUp Make or the creation of SketchUp Free either until it was said. Intelligent people can discern a roadmap Trimble is on based on current moves. Something any engineer or marketing person does every day when trying to understand where their competitors are going. Nothing need be said.

Joe…

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Read what John Bacus has to say about it.

Here is what Trimble said about SketchUp Make in 2013 - officially - on their website:

"But really, there isn’t much else changing here—SketchUp Make is still free for non-commercial use, still powerful and still under active development. We’ve added a batch of new features to the 2013 release of SketchUp Make (check out our new STL import|export extension, for example) and we’re looking forward to developing and supporting it well into the future. Let’s go make stuff together! "

Note particularly " and we’re looking forward to developing and supporting it well into the future". So one might conclude that at max, John’s statement is good for four years. I’m guessing probably less.

p.s. That was a John Bacus post I copied this from.

Joe…

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You must buy SketchUp Pro. You are using SketchUp commercially. I don’t know of anyone who constructs buildings in remote locations for free.

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This would be awesome. I would have bought it before I was doing work with Pro, especially if there was a similar option with LayOut. I’m sure there are a lot of hobbyists who aren’t active in the online community who would do the same.

Well, isn’t everybody is entitled to review insights or visions, along the way? I think that is a good thing, as well as progress.

I agree Mike. People have the right to re-evaluate their position and change course at any time. That’s why, when Trimble says there are no plans to move SketchUp Pro to the cloud we should take that with a grain of salt. In 2013 Trimble said " and we’re looking forward to developing and supporting it well into the future", yet here we are at end-of-life with SketchUp Make. And I would challenge anyone who says SketchUp Free is progress compared to SketchUp Make.

Joe…

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potentially, 93,609,481 Linux users may disagree with you…

currently only a handful have managed to use Make, with many of those stuck on SU v8…

to them, and others SU Free is progress…

john

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But how is progress achieved? By developing ‘behind the curtains’ , until it is finished? Endless discusion on which path to take? Reiterating stained viewpoints? Or to walk the way and move on?

The wise already accepted it and appreciate that they did not implement this earlier, like other software companies, for the sake of the (non paying) community.

I think Trimble somehow view SU Free as a continuation of Make.

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Sketchup Make 2017 and Pro 2018 run perfect on my Ubuntu machine.
This was thanks to the Play on Linux and the Wine programmers.
I didn’t see any action of the Sketchup programmers to make this possible in the past.
They most have an other users on there mind. Probably Chromebook users, and others not using a PC

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That is the total number of Linux users in the world that have access to the internet. The total number of Linux users in the world is even larger, so you might argue that SketchUp Make potential market is even larger and Trimble should have targeted that user base with SketchUp Make, but it didn’t. Why do you suppose that is? One answer is that projecting market potential from numbers like this is a fools game. And to those that would like to use SketchUp, I would highly recommend sticking with SketchUp 8; it is a much better product than SketchUp Free and you have extensions to boot.

Joe…

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Certainly not by putting a lame product on the market and sitting back to see what happens.

Joe…

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I agree. And that’s what scares me.

Joe…

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7 posts were merged into an existing topic: Unable to start SketchUp

Please, start a new topic and do not post unrelated questions at the end of other threads. This thread is for ranting about the discontinuation of SketchUp Make. @TheOnlyAaron - could you split pzbloser’s problem into its own thread

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In fact, move it into the thread that he already started on this issue.

“There’s nothing preventing users from continuing with 2017”. say that to all the plugin developers who will be losing their revenue.
People will not know about the desktop version 2017 who come on board with the free online version. and most likely if they are in the country side where internet is bad and laggy they will get a bad first impression of sketchup and will say so to others.
Without plugin sketch-up online is going nowhere.
Maybe schools may use it and that is your market. but I can’t see businesses taking it up.

This issue is like flat earth for Trimble. Unless they sort it fast it will get louder and more and more videos will show up on youtube each day. LOL

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You sound like a politician. It is clear it is a bad decision, no question about it for the advancement of sketchup as a 3D program when you look at it with Plugins in mind and the plugin developers motivation to build and earn revenue. Most people could use the free 2017 version for the rest of their life and it will do what they require, but it is not about that, it is about building a better faster, easier program for drawing in 3D. which Layout [Which I don’t use] has got the focus of improvement and not the 3D drawing. For me 2018 we get to draw a square from the centre and hover over a line edge to get the dimension in the measurement output. Which is silly having to select another tool when they could of just used the selection tool to do so. And a few bug fixes on the out-liner. Again sections well that is not drawing in 3D. If it where not for fredo plugin. sketchup would be useless to me and all the people I introduced to sketchup since 2005. It would just be to slow for doing things, for example to put rounded corners on edges etc etc. and lots of other issue which the other 3D programs are getting ahead of sketchup. Trimble needs to repent of such a silly decision. Why not offer both options online and download? Just my selfish opinion.