Where to find the REAL SketchUp

Useful tools, documents, links, reference materials, 3D SketchUp models, and other items that might be of help in designing or building your studio.
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Soundman2020
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Where to find the REAL SketchUp

#1

Postby Soundman2020 » Wed, 2019-Oct-23, 22:15

.
UPDATE: OCTOBER 30, 2020
This is your last chance to buy SketchUp!
It dies forever next week.


For more details : Click Here


.

.

godfather-2.jpg


UPDATE: JUNE 2020
Trimble, the current owners of SketchUp, just announced that they are terminating the product.

Well, not actually terminating it, but killing it nevertheless, out of pure greed. After November, you will no longer be able to get a permanent license for it, and instead you will have to pay through the nose, as often as they feel like. If you stop paying, then the software you are using will stop working, and you will not be able to open or use the models you created.

I am currently looking for an alternative to SketchUp to recommend for home studio design, and I will post my findings here. In the meantime, this will probably be your last chance to get the free version, discussed below. I suspect the greedy leeches in the board room will soon remove this, since all they want is your money, and they are no longer interested in customers.


SketchUp is was the preferred program for designing your studio. It's a very powerful tool for doing that, a little quirky, and it takes a while to learn it well, but once you do, it's great.

However.... Trimble, the company that now owns SketchUp, changed the rules a while back. You used to be able to get a free version (called "SketchUp Make") for non-commercial use, that you could download onto your computer and use forever, at no cost. There was also a "pro" version, for people who wanted to use it for commercial purposes (eg, designing studios for other people, like I do), and you had to pay for that one. Fair enough. Simple, and everyone was happy. You could download either version from their website, and even get a 30 day trial of the "pro" version for free, before it automatically turned into the standard version at the end of that period.

Then they messed it all up. Big time! They introduced a subscription type system for using it, as well as various licensing schemes and maintenance plans for different versions that nobody understands (not even them, it seems), and they eliminated the free version. Then they created another version, which they called "free", just to confuse you even more, except that it is a bare-bones, stripped-down-to-nothing, practically useless thing that only runs on-line from a web-browser, and is basically good for nothing at all. It's a toy. Or a joke. Not a serious modelling tool. A waste of time. No use to anybody: it is slllloooowwww, clunky, hard to use, and does not support the plugins or many of the features that are critical to making SketchUp useful.

But what they DON'T tell you, is that you CAN in fact still get the final release of the original free version! Its called "SketchUp Make 2017", and it is still there, on their website... just well hidden. And you can still download it to your own computer, and use it forever, free! They just conveniently neglect to tell you about that.

So, that's the long preamble to explain the link below: It's where you can still get the original and best "SketchUp Make 2017", which is what you should be using to design your studio:


Get it while you still can. Sooner or later they will kill that version too (which will be my cue to dump SketchUp entirely and move to another program). But for now, it's still good.



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#2

Postby Soundman2020 » Sun, 2020-Jun-28, 19:19

Updated, June 2020... See above original post, with update.



SoWhat
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#3

Postby SoWhat » Sun, 2020-Jun-28, 20:33

We're losing SketchUp, but I've got my next band name: "Greedy Leeches," which is almost as good as "The Blender Children" from the movie Tape Heads.

Thanks, Stuart!



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Soundman2020
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#4

Postby Soundman2020 » Tue, 2020-Jun-30, 16:14

but I've got my next band name: "Greedy Leeches,"
Darn! I should have patented and copy-righted that! :)

- Stuart -



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#5

Postby Soundman2020 » Fri, 2020-Oct-30, 11:39

.
This is your last chance to buy SketchUp!
It dies forever next week.


SketchUp sales have officially been killed by Trimble, and it will not be sold any more, after November 4.


Your last chance to actually purchase a real, permanent license for SketchUp is November 4. After that, it will no longer be on sale.

Starting November 5, you will only be able to rent licenses temporarily, and they will expire as soon as you stop paying. You will be at the mercy of Trimble, and whatever pricing policy they decide to impose on you. All your work you do in SketchUp will become inaccessible to you, if you refuse to pay the ransom every few months.

As you can see, this is a rather stupid policy! Basically, if you fork over your hard-earned cash to Trimble after November 4 to rent a license, and you then design something in SketchUp (such as your studio or listening room, for example), but then you can't afford to pay their extortion racket ransom money next time they feel like billing you, then all your work is gone: The license dies, the software stops working, and you cannot, ever, use, view, modify, or even access your design, never again, until you pay up.

A very strange way of doing business! I seem to recall some other organizations that worked like that... I think they called it something like "The Mafia", or something similar... A friendly guy would stop by your store every now and then, and suggest that you should make a donation if you wanted to carry on, with all your limbs in tact.... Perhaps Trimble should run an ad campaign, starring Marlon Brando, making "an offer you can't refuse"...
godfather-kiss-my----[tny].jpg
So, you want to keep using your own property? Then pay up and kiss my ....

Anyway, sarcasm and parody aside: if you do want to be able to access your SketchUp designs in the future, then you need to buy a permanent license NOW, before November 4. You will not be able to do so after that date. To round out the extortion racket, they also announced, gleefully, that you will never be able to update your permanent license in the future: You buy it once, and that's it: No upgrades, no support, no nothing. But at least you get to use it when YOU want.

So those are your choices right now: If you want a license that will work forever, but can never be upgraded, then you pay the one-time exorbitant license fee now, and say goodbye to SketchUp, but at least you can still access your models at any point in the future. Or you can pay the ransom fee every few months, in whatever amount they think you should pay them, as often as they think you should, and you'll still be able to use your own hard work, ... but they will repeat the extortion demand whenever they want, forever... (or until they decide to change the policy yet again).

Your other choice, of course, is to skip SketchUp completely, and switch to another product. Or to only ever work in the obsolete free version, "SketchUp 2017 Make", which will stop being compatible with other versions at some point.

- Stuart -



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#6

Postby Starlight » Fri, 2020-Oct-30, 14:26

This is the way Adobe and other software companies have turned to. It alienates all but the top end professional users who use the software all day, every day.



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#7

Postby Soundman2020 » Fri, 2020-Oct-30, 15:43

Starlight wrote:Source of the post This is the way Adobe and other software companies have turned to. It alienates all but the top end professional users who use the software all day, every day.
Exactly! And it alienates them too, but they have little choice. I'm in the same boat here: It will cost me US$ 750 to get this final license, then I'm calling it quits with SketchUp. This one will have to last for several years, as I have a huge time investment in models and parts of studios, including many Dynamic Components. Thousands of hours of development, in some quite sophisticated things. So basically I am forced to pay them this one final time, just to protect my investment in that, but I'm done. I'll be moving to something else that is either free (public domain), or paid but with guaranteed permanent license, and no Mafia shenanigans.

Even though I'll have to re-invest even more time in learning the new software, and moving my models and components over to it, I'd rather do that than submit to blackmail.

This is what happens when companies put pure greed and revenue numbers ahead of customers and just plain old making a good product at a reasonable price. They end up killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. On the SketchUp forums, you'll see lots of long-time users taking the same path: abandoning the sinking ship. Even most of the plug-in developers have stopped devolving their plugins, because there's no market for them now.

So the goose is dying... but all they see is a few more golden eggs before it does...

- Stuart -



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#8

Postby Soundman2020 » Wed, 2020-Nov-04, 13:25

.
Going.... Going.... Gone!
Today is the last day for SketchUp. Tomorrow, it will be dead.

While gritting my teeth, with tears of frustration streaming down my face, and silently screaming in mental anguish, I hit the "Pay The Ransom" button, and bought the final and last license of SketchUp, ever, forking over US$700 dollars to Don Corleone Trimble. That gets me a permanent SketchUp2020 Pro license that I did not want at all, cannot justify for the "features" it includes (there is nothing at all new, that wasn't already in SU 2014, and 2015, and 2016, and 2017; Trimble has NEVER added ANYTHING worthwhile to the program, and has not even fixed many of the bugs), but (hopefully!) it wont expire, and I'll be able to carry on accessing my years of investment, and carry on doing work for my clients, while I start learning new software and attempting to move everything over to that, whatever it turns out to be. As long as they keep their word ( :?: :lol: ) and the license does not expire, I'm good for a few years of transition.

There's still a few hours left if you want to do the same: They are still selling the product, for the last time, until the close of the day.

Not that I'm encouraging you to do that! It's a LOT of money, and you don't even need the Pro license unless you use it commercially, like I do. If all you need it for is your own personal studio project, then there is still the free "SketchUp Make 2017" license from a couple of years ago: that still works... until they kill that one too. See the first post in this thread for the link to get that. Even though I now have SketchUp 2020, I'll still be exporting all the models I do in SketchUp 2017 format, to ensure that everyone else can use them.

So that's where things stand: You have until the end of the day to buy the exorbitantly priced 2020 Pro license, or carry on using the old 2017 Make version.

Sad. :cen: :cop: :horse: :blah:

- Stuart -



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#9

Postby lostandfound » Tue, 2020-Nov-10, 17:07

Hi Stuart,

it is indeed an unfair trade policy :ahh: personally i am also convinced that it will not reward Trimble.
I bought an annual license on offer but i think i will not renew it next year and like me i think many non-professionals will do it.
Among other things, i know that there are also "pirated" versions and Trimble ....will have to deal with this too :jammin: :jammin:

All the best

Lucio



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#10

Postby ScotcH » Wed, 2020-Nov-25, 22:31

Hint: In case you're unaware, you can save your models as older versions ... and the 2017 free version works perfectly (to date). I don't think it has a time bomb in it, but who knows?

Anyway, if you have a purchased newer version, simple make sure to archive ALL you models and save as 2017 version so it can be opened later without a license (or shared with others who only have the free version).

I do all my work in 2017 version ... the new ones have some nice features (like the section planes in the outliner ... SO nice!) but really the 2017 free you can do everything, and it still has access to the 3d warehouse (though that will likely go away soon ... they disabled 2016 access last year).



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#11

Postby kosulin » Fri, 2020-Nov-27, 14:15

Thanks, I was not able to find the free SketchUp until this thread.
By the way, for those looking for alternatives - I am using Blender to create simple models I can't find for free, and Sweet Home 3D for assembly. Not very polished, but works fine.



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#12

Postby Soundman2020 » Fri, 2021-Jun-25, 01:12

Update on the skulduggery at Trimble: They recently changed the "3D Warehouse" so that it no longer works with Sketchup Make 2017 :oops: :roll: :!: If you try to access it through the program, you get a blank page of nothing. They claim it is because of "browser incompatibilities", but I suspect it is more along the lines of "no longer compatible with our bottom line: we want to squeeze more blood out of you", or somthing like that. However, you can still access 3D warehouse using your normal browser, such as Chrome, Firefox, Opera, or whatever, and download models like that, then import them into SketchUp Make. But that won't work forever either: not all models are available in 2017 format in the warehouse, and you can be sure they will slowly (or quickly!) eliminate the few that still are... So you will then need to move the model you want through the "free" on-line toy version, and save it in 2017 format.... or ask a friend who has a later version to convert the model for you....

- Stuart -



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#13

Postby Ethan Connor » Mon, 2021-Jul-19, 08:07

If they give us trial of 30 Days then we will download it from Torrent site. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: same like MS office and Adobe photoshop done. Now majority of peoples are using cracked version of above named software. :horse: :horse: :horse: :horse:


THIS USER IS A SPAMMER. ALL POSTS WILL BE DELETED SHORTLY, AFTER REVIEW.

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#14

Postby gullfo » Mon, 2021-Jul-19, 09:24

i bought the pro subscription. $200/yr. has SU and LayOut. been using it for years on the old pro license under the education price (since i was getting my masters degree...) the latest version is pretty good in terms of stability and updated functionality. i'm mainly using the dynamic components functionality (which to edit requires pro version or use the attributes inspector 8) ) and of course a number of plugins and my own scripts and plugins.
sadly if you're not willing to fork over the $ then the free online version is the only SU option. for floor plans and no 3D - try draw.io - free app plus browser version works great, or use Google Draw. or if you sign up for Bing, you get a scaled back version of office online which includes power point.
i don't recommend the hacked torrent version of any software since 99.999% have a trojan or backdoor embedded, and since most of those are custom polymorphic vectors, your commercial AV won't find it, and as a result, your AV is likely compromised to miss out on all the stuff being installed on your system (as well as removed).



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#15

Postby MarcinRak » Mon, 2022-Aug-08, 05:54

Very useful information, thanks! the free version is encough to me.
SketchUp has unlimited possibilities, the only limitation is ignorance of its functions. A super useful 3D modeling software!
personally I use the XP-Pen Deco 01 V2 drawing pad and 100% recommend it. which Works well in SketchUP and Adobe Photoshop.




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