SketchUp Pro 2018 released and SketchUp Free, a new web-based version, announced

Trimble has announced a new version of its popular modelling software SketchUp Pro, as well as a new web-based version called SketchUp Free. New features of SketchUp Pro include:

• Advanced Attributes that allow users to embed information into a model when creating and managing components.
• Improvements to Generate Report to enable users to aggregate component data so that information contained in models can be extracted and organised.
• Improvement to IFX export tools to ensure that attributes imported from other BIM applications are retained upon export.
• Section Planes can now be named. and performance has been improved.
• Filled and styled section cuts are now included in Sketchup, without the need for 3rd party plugins.
• Several drawing improvements including the ability to draw a rectangle around its center using modify keys, quicker control for rotated rectangles, improved Tape Measuring workflow, and axial colour coding added to the Free Hand tool.
• STL Import and Export is now natively supported.

The full list of changes can be found in the release notes and you can find out more on SketchUp’s website.

This release also appears to mark the end of development for SketchUp Make. The previous build will remain available but according to an announcement by the the Trimble team on their forum they “aren’t updating SketchUp Make this year – and won’t be updating it in the future”. They go on to explain that their free offering is moving to a new browser based service called Sketchup Free, which works with Trimble Connect cloud for file management.

It seem that Trimble are aware that this will not be to everyone’s tastes, acknowledging that “Free is definitely a new approach to 3D modeling. So, we do expect that a lot of people will prefer to stick with SketchUp Make, or upgrade to SketchUp Pro, to keep using SketchUp on desktop. That’s okay: but, we’d love to hear what you love and [gulp] loathe about our web modeler.”