Moving forward with SketchUp 2017

By Mark Harrison

       

It's that time of year: our latest desktop update, SketchUp 2017, is available to download today! The best way to explore our software is to use it: so watch this video, then jump into a new SketchUp and orbit for yourself!

SketchUp 2017: a smarter SketchUp, down to the tiniest sliver of geometry

This is SketchUp's fifth major desktop update since joining Trimble. If you've paid attention to our releases over the years, you know that we've sped up quite a bit. And if you're really paying attention to SketchUp, you may have realized something interesting is also happening:

Our desktop software updates once a year, but, really, SketchUp is evolving all the time.

Every day, our team works to make SketchUp Pro and LayOut faster, more accessible, smarter, and just plain better. In parallel, we're also working to deliver more SketchUp in more ways.

For instance: have you tried my.SketchUp yet? It's our new web-based modeler, and we are extraordinarily proud that it shares the performance DNA and good looks of its desktop older sibling. If you are participating in our beta, you've probably noticed that my.SketchUp is already growing up, and hooking into SketchUp Pro software through Trimble Connect.

My.SketchUp is our new web-based modeler. It's still in beta, but it's getting sharper, faster, and more connected to the desktop SketchUp all the time.

And if you've been poking around 3D Warehouse over the past few months, you might have noticed that we're using my.SketchUp to power our 3D web viewer. Even better, the performance improvements we're introducing in SketchUp 2017 also feature in my.SketchUp, 3D Warehouse, LayOut, SketchUp Mobile Viewer, and Trimble Connect.

Our core rendering pipeline (improved in SketchUp 2017) is now the foundation for 3D Warehouse's web viewer too. This is very good news if you use 3D Warehouse to embed 3D models on your own site. Metal Coping Detail by International Masonry Institute.

Something else is new today, and it's also not part of our annual client release. The SketchUp Viewer on Microsoft HoloLens is an entirely new way to experience project models in mixed reality environments. To say we are geeking out about the potential of this new technology is an understatement.

The SketchUp Viewer on HoloLens is a new way to experience and review your designs.

And, yes, that's all in addition to the big desktop update we are announcing this week. Trying SketchUp 2017 is entirely free, so we encourage you to try out our new inferences, import spreadsheets into LayOut, export a .DWG, manage your extensions, and maybe just play around. Moving forward into 2017, we think this is one of our best desktop releases yet.