Its a whole host of little things that are beginning to add up to make SketchUp a much less flexable and fun a tool to use. Which, honestly I’d rather give them my money anyway, so I guess thats fine. SketchUp still relies way too much on its developer community for tools and now those tools are all starting to get more expensive. Layout, while its also, fine for little things, constantly hangs with real projects, is poorly supported and not ready for any kind of real production environment because it’s still treated as an after-thought. The fact that the Make version no longer exists for hobbiest users and the web version is fine but pretty useless for more advanced hobbie users.

Between the most recent user account debackle that has forced many firms away from using the product, at-all, because of fixed user seat licenses. There are some arguably good elements that have been introduced in recent years, but the over-arching theme here has been general stagnation of the product, and regular headaches over the last four years as they have transitioned to a SAAS model. SketchUp has gotten better over the years, but I’m frustrated with the way Trimble has been handiling things lately.

I was the product manager for V-Ray for SketchUp, and I get what its like to be on the development side too. Im very satisified, and have been using the product for, jeeze, to 15 years now. Listen, Ive been using SketchUp since the days.

3dwarehouse sketchup