Hew v1.4.0

Hew v1.4.0 - The "All In" Release

Hew now opens and saves every SketchUp file there is, from SketchUp 3 through SketchUp 2027. Three things are new in this release, and they are for three different readers.

If you have SketchUp files

Every version opens: releases 3 to 8, 2013 to 2020, and the 2021-and-later format that SketchUp 2027 still uses. Save writes the file back in the version it came in, so a 2017 file stays a 2017 file. Save As writes any version. SketchUp itself has not been able to save back past 2021 for years; Hew can take a 2027 model and write it as a SketchUp 8 file, hand it to a copy of SketchUp that old, and open what comes back. A file is read by what is in it, not by the version in its header, and anything an older version cannot hold is listed after the save.

More of the file comes through now. Layer folders become tag paths and go back as folders. Scene timing, guide dash patterns, the section plane's color and fill, and a Match Photo camera survive a round trip. A model's geo-location shows at the top of Model Info. Materials with metallic and roughness values draw in the viewport (approximated, since Hew shades with Phong, not a PBR pipeline) and get Metallic and Roughness sliders in the material palette. What Hew still cannot show (hatch patterns, environments, snaps, procedures) rides through a save untouched, and the open report says how much of it there was.

If you model in Hew

• Detached drawing. Tap Ctrl (⌘ on a Mac) on any draw tool and the shape stays off the face under it, so a circle centered on a box corner can still become a cylinder. Drawing is color-coded: blue is a free shape that Push/Pull turns into a new object, orange is part of a solid's face and Push/Pull moves the solid.
• Two new snaps. Where an edge of one object passes through a face of another, that point is an Intersection. Where two objects' faces meet, the line between them is a snap you can slide along, with a midpoint. Separate objects never merge in Hew, so neither existed as geometry before; both existed in your eye. [#63]
• Live component copies. Editing one copy of a component no longer hides the others. They stay in view, every change shows on all of them, and a Push/Pull or Move drag previews on every copy before you click. Clicks reach the open component through whatever is in front of it, so a part sunk into another solid can be edited without X-ray.
• Guides you can move. Move and Rotate take a guide like any selection, with axis locks, typed values, and 6x or 6/ for a row or a fan of copies. [#91] [#78] [#94]
• One-click dimensions. Click a line itself and both ends are taken; drag the dimension out. [#70]
• Marquee selection no longer drops a drag, shows Window (solid blue) and Crossing (dashed green) as you drag, and is fast over large models.
• Subtract refuses to do nothing. A cutter that misses or only touches its target used to vanish and leave the target unchanged. Now Hew says "Nothing was cut away" and leaves both where they are.

If you want in

Eight pull requests from two new contributors landed in this release, the most of any Hew release so far. DaveMDS wrote the guide tools, the one-click dimension, and three selection fixes (lines on guides, guides and dimensions when zoomed in). chipset made tray sections resizable [#42] and fixed the Flatpak install on systems with a per-user Flathub [#48]. Thank you both.

Two more doors are open. Help ▸ Sent Reports lets you follow a bug report you sent: replies, status, and a place to answer or attach another file, with no account and no email address. And https://beta.hew3d.com runs the current main branch, so you can try what the next release will be without waiting for it; files saved there may not open in the released app. Eight user-reported bugs are fixed in this release; two more kernel faults were found by the fuzzer before anyone hit them.

The .hew format moves from manifest 22 to 26. Hew opens every older file; a file saved with the new features needs 1.4.0 or later.

Full list below. Hew updates itself if it is installed; otherwise https://hew3d.com/download, or run it in the browser at https://app.hew3d.com.

Downloads

The download page picks the right build
for your system, or grab a file directly:

Platform	x64 / Intel	ARM64 / Apple Silicon
macOS — disk image	universal .dmg	universal .dmg
Windows — installer	.exe	.exe
Linux — AppImage	.AppImage	.AppImage
Linux — Debian/Ubuntu	.deb	.deb
Linux — Fedora/openSUSE	.rpm	.rpm
Web — self-hosting tarball	.tar.gz	.tar.gz
Relay — self-hosted Open on Phone (Linux)	.tar.gz	.tar.gz

• The macOS disk image is signed and notarized; one universal app
  covers Apple Silicon and Intel. Homebrew users can
  brew install --cask hew3d/tap/hew instead, which also puts
  hew-cli on the PATH.
• Windows installers are not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may
  warn on first run — choose More info, then Run anyway.
• On Linux, mark the AppImage executable (chmod +x) before
  first run, or install the .deb/.rpm. Arch, Gentoo, and Flatpak
  users have native packages too, at
  hew3d.github.io/hew-packages.
• Desktop builds update themselves; latest.json and the
  .sig assets serve that built-in updater and are not meant
  for manual download.
• Or skip installing entirely: Hew runs in the browser at
  app.hew3d.com.
• Self-hosting the web app, and the optional relay that makes
  Open on Phone work against your own server, is documented in
  docs/SELF_HOSTING.md.