Blender is too difficult to follow for this senior citizen…also, no way I can afford a sketchup pro subscription on a senior fixed income.

I empathize with you. I have felt this way at times, myself. But I just haven’t found anything else to scratch my itch to create…

Presumably you’re using SketchUp as a hobbyist.

I am a hobbyist, myself. So I can’t afford a pro subscription, either.

Why not use SketchUp Free?

I don’t use SketchUp Free (i.e. the web version) because it does not have all the features of SU 2015 Make. And even though I have pretty good internet speeds, I find it lags. But… (see below)

Your profile says you are using SketchUp 2017 Make.

I have SU 2017 Make also, but I rarely use it. I prefer SU 2015, because I find the performance of the 2017 Make to be unusable on my 2014 machine.

I can’t seem to import components…

Where do you get the components from? Why are they collada files?

… installing the web based app as a local app

Thanks, @MikeWayzovski - I might just try that!

As @TheOnlyAaron indicated, you just need to learn how soften edges.

If the component already had softened edges that end up “hardened” by the time @RWK gets them imported, then it’s a real pain to find all those edges that should be softened again… So let’s be careful about saying it is “simply an issue of learning…” and “you just need to learn…”.

Blender isn’t as difficult as it seems, the UI can be a bit overwhelming but once you get to know it it’s a great software

I have found Blender to be pretty inscrutable, and I’m a software developer! I tried learning it twice - granted I didn’t have many hours to put into it. I think Blender assumes too much knowledge of computer graphics concepts (this is also a criticism I have for some of the rendering tools I have tried). At least SU, though a little buggy here and there, is fairly intuitive for starting out.

I’m intrigued to learn more about FormZ and CYPE, though, again, I don’t have a lot of time / motivation to learn new tools.

Back to SketchUp Free on the web… I said previously that I don’t use it, but that’s not completely true. I do sometimes open up SU Free to access the 3D Warehouse (Trimble cut off access to the warehouse from SU 2015 / 2017). I find something in the warehouse that I want to use, and I download it to my machine in 2015 format, so I can import it directly into my model. No converting to collada or anything like that…

Would that work for you?

[Sorry, I gave wrong information, above. Apparently SU Free has changed, so I am no longer able to download models in earlier formats. So my brief encounter with SU Free has come to an end - it is completely useless to me.]