Too much Sketchup

I like mapping out my home. I like it a lot, and for the past 5 places I’ve lived, I’ve spend a lot of time arranging furniture with a 3D software. Maybe a little too much time :-).

Is my hobby a problem?

I use Sweet Home 3D. I know it may not be the best of the best, but there is a free version (I now have decided I would by it on the MacOS App Store), it’s decent (though it does crash every now and then), it’s written by a fellow Frenchman, all good things.
While it also comes with a decent collection of 3D furniture, I’ve also started searching only for 3D models of our furniture. For Ikea things, that’s really easy. For some other things like our kitchen table, I’ve managed to find very close models, and then edit them. I’ve done that a lot actually, for example for my desk which is the top of a reclaimed wood table mounted on top of an electric standing desk feet. For this, I used Sketchup. Most of this was around 2015-2018. From sketchup you export to DAE format, you create a ZIP file with the DAE file and the folder holding the texture, and voilà!

How I got to the issue

Recently we bought a crib and the assorted dresser (presents from the family) for our little one to come. There wasn’t a dresser that looked like the one we’re getting, so I decided to model it. It’s a simple enough piece of furniture.

First, I searched for “free 3D model from picture”. Boy there are a lot of results. Turns out, the free ones are NOT good. Who would have thought 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

So I went back to Sketchup, and I discovered that their free offering is only in the browser now, which is fine I guess, and I will admit being actually pleasantly surprised bu how good it is. Yes, it did crash a couple times, but still, really usable, really nice. And then I tried to export, and I realized you have to get a paying license to export. You know what? I’m not against that actually. The software isn’t writing itself (no, ChatGPT cannot write it either), and it’s ok, let me see the non commercial license.

Well, this is where is gets ugly: they have a “commercial” tier, and an “education” tier. The cheapest license is $119 a year. I’m ready to pay $50. Maybe even $50 for one year. But not $119 in order to export one, maybe two or three pieces of furniture that I would have very badly put together in a 3D model.
I try to save as SKP and upload it to one of the free services you get to when googling “free SKP to OBJ”, but the result was bad (and crashed Sweet Home 3D on import).

The solution

I reluctantly found a German website that would let me download the DMG file for Sketchup 2018, the latest downloadable free version. I got very suspicious, but it turns out you can check the digital signature of a binary, and it did come from the makers of Sketchup.

~ % codesign -dv --verbose=4 /Volumes/SketchUp\ 2018\ \(English\)/SketchUp\ 2018/SketchUp.app
Executable=/Volumes/SketchUp 2018 (English)/SketchUp 2018/SketchUp.app/Contents/MacOS/SketchUp
Identifier=com.sketchup.SketchUp.2018
Format=app bundle with Mach-O thin (x86_64)
[...]
CandidateCDHash sha1=09febcbcc763f2fa8bb503a46d39a0bbccff76fb
CandidateCDHashFull sha1=09febcbcc763f2fa8bb503a46d39a0bbccff76fb
CandidateCDHash sha256=66b8966c45feb5206f9620f85e7acc09987a0a31
CandidateCDHashFull sha256=66b8966c45feb5206f9620f85e7acc09987a0a318753beaafbd214bd300b166a
Hash choices=sha1,sha256
CMSDigest=40c5ef897c1d702c3769af3a7fe552e8adf45e24e3aefacc800c2e1315682334
CMSDigestType=2
Page size=4096
Launch Constraints:
	None
CDHash=66b8966c45feb5206f9620f85e7acc09987a0a31
Signature size=8941
Authority=Developer ID Application: Trimble Navigation Limited (J8PVMCY7KL)
Authority=Developer ID Certification Authority
Authority=Apple Root CA
Timestamp=Oct 30, 2018 at 1:52:04 PM
[...]

This actually looks good: signed byt Trimble, with a certificate that ends up being signed by Apple. This is the real deal.

If this helps anyone, this is the MD5 sum of the DMG file:

MD5 (/Users/.../Downloads/SketchUpPro-2018-en.dmg) = af3c6b6f2914dfac8946a66e3ba69fb4

# In the end

This is the rendering in Sweet Home 3D of the dresser (with some toys added from the SH3D default library). I’m relatively proud of it to be honest, considering I have no idea what I’m doing with a 3D software, and I haven’t read the manual.

If that’s any use, here’s the ZIP file with DAE and texture that you can use.

Update 2023-06-04: it turns out I was mistaken, the last free version is Sketchup Make 2017.