Tuesday, May 21, 2013

SketchUp 2013 is here!

The Trimble SketchUp blog just announced the arrival of SU 2013.  I've just started playing with it after purchasing the upgrade and filling out all the forms, then downloading and installing it.

Important: If you get rendered views in Layout showing up as mere x-ray faces, you might be having issues with your graphics driver / card.  I had to adjust mine so that my GeForce GT 555M would run instead of Intel's SoC GPU, for Layout and SU.

I thought I'd point out some differences off the bat:

  • SU 2013 is now on an annual upgrade (support and maintenance fee) cycle.
  • The software remains perpetual license (never expires, even if you service and maintenance subscription expires).
  • The upgrade price is the same at $95, but the new software price went up from $495 to $590, because in essence it includes a 2-year support and maintenance fee.  In that respect, the price is the same, but you pay for two years up front.
  • The focus seems to be on easy installs of plugins from within SU.
  • Layout has some interesting new functions.
    • A new pattern function allows you to add construction document drawings with sand, steel, gypsum board, etc. patterns, to shapes you draw directly in Layout.  I guess this is their way of encouraging easy CAD drafting, instead of drawing it inside of SU?
    • The new pattern also fills the background of your SU model views, which I suppose there might be some good to it, I just don't know what.
    • A quick function to make text "bigger" or "smaller".
  • All of the icons in SU have been altered enough to require you to do a double-take.
  • Both SU 2013 and Layout 2013 open up faster than SU 8 and Layout 3.

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