It isn't the most powerful SketchUp ever made. But for a generation of designers, it is the best one.
SketchUp 2017 hit a perfect equilibrium. It used —modern enough to support virtually every great plugin from the golden age (Think 1001bit Tools , Artisan , Skalp , Curviloft ), but not so new that developers had to rewrite everything.
But SketchUp 2017 is different.
If you hang around woodworking forums, indie game dev discords, or architecture Reddit threads, you will find a passionate group of users clinging to this specific version. For many, SketchUp 2017 isn’t just a legacy app—it’s the peak of the software’s life.