The kinds of large scale projects I like to make in SketchUp really began to feel constrained at a certain point. A modeler with SketchUp's incredible UI that can take full advantage of any computer's available graphics hardware to render large amounts of geometry more efficiently would be a wonderful thing.
I'm very possessive of my SketchUp models, and so the idea of storing them on any kind of cloud server I don't have control over is abhorrent to me. I was not happy to see Trimble putting so much effort into making a web-based modeler.
This comes up so often it's good to explain what happened there.
They were not out to extract value from consumer.
They retargeted the offering to professional engineering and architecture firms.
SketchUp was originally an offering for the AEC market. Then Google bought it and essentially pivoted it to consumer offering. Then Trimble bought it and pivoted it back.
I do realize this hurts the person who is a non-professional user but AFAIK SketchUp sales have never been better.
So it's not a pivot out of stupidity or malice, it's just a pivot.
The main customers - engineering and architecture companies - seem to be fine with it.
If you were an engineer CAD manager it would be odd to pay hundreds per seat a year for a product consumers can get for a pittance. So it's about pricing power I guess as well.
And do agree as a consumer there should be better options.
My exit has been FreeCAD with an MCP-bridge, letting me talk to an agent that implements my requests directly in the FreeCAD file I have open. Works super well with FreeCAD which has all the features I need, but where they can be hard to discover.
You can set up a digital twin of your actual workshop, with config-driven models of table/band/miter/hand saws, router tables, drill press, chisels and rasps, all sorts of fun.
I recently added a jig system too, so you can build jigs that you can actually use, both in your shop and in the tool. It's all drivable by a human or an MCP, and has video and plan authoring and sharing built in.
I've been building this as a labor of love since getting laid off in April, it's all completely free to use and people have made some really damn cool plans with it.
There is a name for it: "enshitification" is the strategy of maximizing short term gains, even if that results in product suicide on the long run.
Trimble bought Sketchup 14 years ago. In the world of commercial software, that's a decent run and they seem to be going strong. They just aren't interested in the nickel-and-dime world of selling to and dealing with consumers.