Translate This Page
.
UPDATE: OCTOBER 30, 2020
This is your last chance to buy SketchUp!
It dies forever next week.
For more details : Click Here
UPDATE: OCTOBER 30, 2020
This is your last chance to buy SketchUp!
It dies forever next week.
For more details : Click Here
.
.
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.
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.
) and the license does not expire, I'm good for a few years of transition.
personally i am also convinced that it will not reward Trimble.
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....
) and of course a number of plugins and my own scripts and plugins.