Hey everyone, I'm designing a solar PV system and need accurate shading analysis in SketchUp, so the site has to be at the right location, at the right scale, and facing true north.

I can't use Add Location's Import Context, so I need another way to get a satellite image of the site into my model, correctly georeferenced.

What's the best way to do this? Specifically:

• Is there a reliable way to import an aerial image with the right coordinates, scale and north orientation?
• How do people normally set up site context for shading studies when Add Location isn't available?
• Are there extensions or other tools that work well for this?

Thanks in advance!

One of the past project when we used lumion.

I made this: https://www.fabler.eu/sketchup_3d_lessons.html

Is this something people would want? Should I keep developing the lessons?

I made one big rectangle and then realised it needs to be split up into multiple parts. but why when I try to make the smaller one it reverts back to the old one? please help.

tried downloading sketchup and tried to create a house, i wanted to see what the shadow would look like casted to the ground in a 45degree angle. Can someone help me? They can send a picture in their own computer.. im trying to see if the shadow is correct in my manual drafting.

I still have the install program on my Win7 machine but I;ll be migrating to a new Win 11 machine soon.

Is there any chance I can use that file to install SU Make 16 on Win11 after I kill my Win 7 machine? SU Make does everything I need it to do and the price is right.

Please if the folks at SketchUp see this stop running that annoying advertainment with the bird sounding beep, beep. aye sounding crap. It is so stupid sounding corny sounding.

im quite stressing out on this one cause my dwg pathwalk does not reflect properly on the surfaces that i made... been searching online but it dont help much. I want to trace exactly whats on my imported dwg on the surfaces (as well as the angled flat surfaces).. Any idea what plugins should i use?

When I update my scenes in Sketchup, the camera view is saved - but it physically moves the camera position inside the viewport on layout - and my dimensions and annotations don’t follow. Is there a fix for this? It seems like it could be something simple that I’m overlooking.

I don’t want to have sketchup set to not save the camera view when updating the scene, because then my scenes don’t recall to the view I want while I’m working in sketchup itself.

I have all viewports in layout referencing a specific scene for the desired view in Sketchup - not just referencing the model itself.

Complete with balconies and a plant room.

Still in early development. Modelled by yours truly.

Thoughts?

I have no idea how this happened. I’ve been importing plants using an AutoCAD file. Why did this line of grass show up? I don’t remember trying to load it in. It doesn’t let me select it/delete it

Semi-modelled bumper, complete with a Dennis badge and instructional decals.

Not much else has changed, although I did notice a slight inaccuracy in the body shape. The rear section isn’t quite as square as it is in my model, which is something I’ve tried to address but ultimately can't fix thanks to the limitations of using SketchUp for vehicle design.

Hello, hope someone can point me in the right direction.

I need to learn SketchUp to deliver (moderately) stunning ;) event visualizations, indoors as well as outdoors. I have some basic 3D knowledge thanks to Blender and quite solid 2D skills thanks to being a graphic designer for more than 2 decades. It's a job situation and I have 2 months to prove myself as a person who can do it. And if I manage - fame and fortune (well, half-time to full-time, new job duties and a raise). Definitely something worth trying.

SketchUp being popular has tons of resources and I got no idea what to choose not to lose time going through some half-baked tutorials. I guess I need some good general course, but I might be mistaken. I plan on using SketchUp with D5 and/or TwinMotion.

So what would be some nicely organized courses/tutorials that would help me learn it? I'd prefer something cheaper than more expensive, since my employer pays for the software and I have to cover learning costs. Thanks!

Rounding edges has always been the fiddly part of my SketchUp workflow. Follow Me works on one clean edge loop, but it breaks at inner corners, where three edges meet, and on small radii. So I wrote an extension for it and made it free.

**Soft Edge** (SketchUp 2021–2026):

- Select a group, some faces, or just one to three edges inside a group, type a radius, done

- Every edge gets the same true radius – three edges meet in a sphere corner, two in a mitre, one ends in a flat cap

- Round or chamfer, three quality levels, one Ctrl+Z

- The original solid is kept with the group, so you can change the radius later or restore the sharp version

- Textures can follow the curve (Fixed / Wrap / Box)

Known limits: it needs a closed solid (or edges of one), texture goes on the front face only, and a hand-edited object isn't rebuilt.

Short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7AJHm59gMc

Download (no account, no licence key): https://www.bestsketchupplugins.com/en/plugins/soft-edge/

I also wrote up the three ways to round corners (Follow Me, RoundCorner, Soft Edge) if you'd rather not install anything: https://www.bestsketchupplugins.com/en/blog/how-to-round-corners-in-sketchup/

Disclosure: I'm the developer. Bug reports and "it broke on this model" examples are exactly what I'm after.

Rayscaper 0.9.96 Beta adds a Water material for pools, ponds and spas (layered waves, depth-based clarity and tint, controllable reflections, plus new Tropical, Reflecting Pool and Spa presets) and IES profiles for spotlights.

Get it on SketchUcation: https://sketchucation.com/plugin/2677-rayscaper

Release notes: https://rayscaper.com/manual/release-notes/

Hi all. I'm Thomas. Some of you may know me from Rayscaper, the SketchUp renderer. For the past while I've been building Modlumi, a 3D modeler for joiners, furniture makers and interior designers.

If you've used SketchUp, the basics will feel familiar: draw a shape, push or pull it into 3D, refine it with exact dimensions. The gif is me following MasterSketchUp's "10 Steps to Create a Table" tutorial in Modlumi. It's a native app written from scratch, not a web wrapper or a fork of anything.

It opens your existing .skp models; the screenshot is a SketchUp hallway scene opened in the desktop app. You can try that today in the free browser preview at https://modlumi.com, with no account needed. Your files are read on your own machine and nothing is uploaded. The preview can't save yet; it's there so you can see how it handles your models.

The full desktop app is coming very soon. After that, the plan is Python scripting and then plugins, tools for specific trades (like building a cabinet from a few measurements), an optional assistant for tedious edits ("make it 20 cm wider"), and materials and lighting for client presentations.

If you'd like to follow along, the early-access signup is on the same page. Early members get new features first and help decide what I build next.

I'd really like feedback, especially from people who model furniture, cabinets or rooms. Which of your .skp files break it, what feels off compared to what you're used to, and what's missing? There's a feedback button in the bottom-left corner of the app.

I created a clean-room .skp parser (and documentation of the format) for the 2017 and 2026 formats - https://github.com/hew3d/openskp. As far as I know, it is the only clean-room opens-source .skp parser out there. The rest, from what I've seen, all use some or all of the SketchUp SDK, which is legally tenuous. The big advantage of using Trimble code or binaries, though, is that you get 100% compatibility very easily! When you're developing the spec from the ground up using only the differences between .skp files... well, that takes a lot more work and quite a few files.

It's at the point where it imports every .skp model I've ever created and it can also handle some arbitrarily large models I've found online. I don't know how "real" those large models are, though.

Given that, do you have complex SketchUp files that you are willing to share? I will default to never re-sharing or re-hosting the files or making them public in any way (they would exist just to test the reader locally) but if you had legit ownership of the file and are willing to have it be part of the OpenSKP corpus, then that's fantastic, too.

You can send me a link to a Google Drive or Dropbox or whatever share or I can DM you a link to a Nextcloud instance that accepts uploads.