Topic Title

We are considering purchasing Sketchup Pro. I wanted to know people's thought/opion where about pro.

I also have a few questions
1) Is the pro license good for the lifetime of the software?
2) Can you install one license on more than one computer?
3) Can the free version open Pro files also?

Thanks to all that can help.

Yes, you own it forever. Upgrades have been about $100.

I believe you can install it on more than one computer, but I don't think you can run it on both at the same time. You might want to ask Google about this, to be sure?

The files are the same -- the free version can't do certain things like export DWG (v8?) and it cannot create active components, and it can't do the new water tight components? There is probably a FAQ. You have to have the same version free and Pro in order to share files -- v7 can't open v8 files (but you can do Save As older versions.

V8 is not as compatible with DataCAD X3 -- v7 XRef's straight into X3; and I don't think v8 will.

The 13.03.02 update was supposed to add v.8 support but I have not tried it myself yet.

Thanks Josh, I missed that.

Arthur, I would try getting along with the free version of SketchUp for a while, until you find you need a tool / ability that the free one doesn't have. I would guess that that tool might be the ability to export DWG, or something like that.

[Mark F. Madura]

Google SketchUp Pro will run in a fully-functional demo mode for 8 hours. A tip from the late Geoff Langdon was to use the demo version for DWG conversions since you can perform a lot of transfers in 8 hours.

FWIW,

MFM

Thank you very much for the information. If Datacad will support Sketchup Version 8, is it possible to create sketchup files with Datacad? Eliminating the need to import/export dwg files.

[Mark F. Madura]

Absolutely!
You can use File, Export, SketchUp to convert your current drawing to SketchUp format.
You can use Insert, SketchUp to convert a SketchUp file to DataCAD format.

javascript:emoticon(':D') A good notice New upgrade X3 can read SketchUp 8 Thanks Mark

Mark,
Thank you very much for the advice. This resolves my need for Pro and is a quicker way of starting my Sketch Up models.

One quick note: Where we primarly use Datacad for 2d drawings and don't add "Z" information, I noticed that I had to assign a "Z" dimension to get the drawing to convert to Sketch Up. Lines with no or zero "Z" height, would not translate to a Sketch Up file.