Hi everyone,

I am having an issue when importing a model/overlay (.kmz) created in SketchUp 2026 into Google Earth Pro.

As shown in the attached screenshot, the imported layer renders as a solid, dark, misaligned rectangular overlay that covers the base satellite imagery and clips awkwardly through the ground instead of displaying properly.

Details:

• Modeling Software: SketchUp 2026
• Mapping Tool: Google Earth Pro
• File Format: .kmz
• Problem: Opaque dark box overlay, misaligned orientation, and terrain elevation clipping.

Has anyone using SketchUp 2026 run into this specific dark rectangular overlay bug in Google Earth Pro? What is the fix to get it aligned and displaying correctly on top of the terrain?

Thanks for any help!

Sometimes when I pan my camera, part of my project disappears, even though my camera isn’t panning into something. Then, if I zoom in or out even the slightes, my camera zooma really far out. How do I fix this?

Hi everyone. We're a small interior design studio in India, and we built a tool for our own SketchUp work. It's called Vivid Render.

How it works: you install the free plugin and set up your views in SketchUp. You can mark cove lights, mirrors and glass. Then you click "Send to Vivid", and every scene renders with the same camera. You don't type any prompts.

What you can expect: your design stays as you modelled it, coves light up where you marked them, and mirrors and glass look right. You also get day, evening and night versions, close-ups, and 4K.

Pricing is per render, and the first 3 are free.

We'd really like feedback from SketchUp users. Tell us what works and what doesn't.

(Disclosure: I'm part of the team. Link in the comments.)

Hi is there a way to make the storyboard template, or paper template be transparent when you go to export to png?

Iam trying to export a floor plan as a png file in layout, I have set the background in the viewport to be transparent but I would like the paper template/story board template also be transparent because I plan to use the exported png file in a 3rd party app and that app works better if the paper template/story board is transparent.

Made in SketchUp and rendered with Enscape, using proxies.

Feedback is welcome, especially on materials, lighting, and reflections

hello! i am a recent college graduate who was taught both revit and sketchup which landed me my current job role as a designer for a construction company! this is important because i was never taught any construction documentation outside of revit. the most i ever learned with sketchups layout was basic measuring for kitchen and bathroom projects, and how to create drawings for basic things like decks and roofs. i have never had to use sketchup for projects as large as additions or new buildings where we would need a foundation plan, schedules, cross sections etc. in school and my internship we strictly used revit for that because, let’s be real, it’s the best thing alongside CAD. my current company uses sketchup only and isn’t willing to dive into CAD and revit (cost mostly) because they have had success with sketchup in the past.

i am hoping to get some help and advice on the best way to learn how to do these more detailed things in sketchup or any extensions anyone knows that will help me to efficiently be able to create all the views needed. sketchup is almost all user generated while revit works out those details for you and i am struggling quite a bit to find out generally how to do them and then most efficient way to do them. i know sketchups capabilities will not hit those of revits convenience, but i just need some advice or guidance on the best way to make this work for me so that i am not spending days on little things that could be done within an hour.

thanks in advance to everyone who responds with advice!

Hi again. Hew is my free, open-source 3D modeler that works like SketchUp (runs native on Mac, Windows, and Linux, solids-based). In the 1.1 thread I said the .skp importer was next. Well, it's done, and it went much further than I planned (which is why this release took so long): .skp is now a working format in Hew, not just an import!

Now, you can open a .skp file as a document, then edit it, and when you save it back, it writes back as a .skp (if you want). Both the 2017 and 2026 formats work. You can then send the file back to somebody on SketchUp and they open it like nothing happened. Or maybe you want to pass it through a renderer that's still SketchUp-specific. Anything Hew doesn't yet support just stays in the file untouched. And if the save does have to simplify something (Hew already does a few things better than SketchUp), then Hew lists exactly what that is and offers to keep a .hew copy.

The opened files look the way SketchUp shows them, scene by scene. We're talking cameras, section cuts, hidden tags and objects, guides, dimensions, leader text, images, even paint on the back of a face. I spent hours nit-picking visual changes on a lot of very complicated models to make sure they looked one-to-one.

This means that 3D Warehouse models now work. Open up the SketchUp web app, choose your Warehouse component, and then have the web app download it. Hew can then load that .skp file and use it in its own documents (.hew or .skp).

All of this and it's still clean-room - the only one that I know of. Still no SketchUp SDK and still no DMCA or lawyers.

Since Hew can now load some very complex models, it made sense to implement a nice Flying feature. If you hold down the right mouse button (or Camera ▸ Fly), then you're in a video game: WASD moves forward/back and strafe, E/Q go up and down, mouse looks around, Shift sprints, and scroll sets the speed. If you've ever played FPS video games, then this will feel super natural and be a load of fun. Heads up: right-drag used to pan and so I repurposed it (Pan is still Shift + middle drag, or the Pan tool).

Also in 1.2:

• Object ▸ Make Solid: tells you which imported objects aren't solid and why, then closes the openings and rejoins the split shapes for you
• Drawing on a face works like drawing on the ground: shapes can overhang or cross an edge and split the face
• The tool rail shrinks to icons and the tray hides, for the people who asked for more viewport on a laptop (a PR!)
• A pile of fixes from GitHub issues (#20, #31, #38): rectangle sizes on walls, Object Info repaints, the command palette running the row you picked

Full list: https://github.com/hew3d/hew/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md

Hew auto-updates if it's already installed but if you're new - https://hew3d.com/download

This release had two GitHub Pull Requests - one to implement a feature and one to fix a bug. The best way to guarantee that your feature or fix makes it into the next release is to code it yourself and I will almost surely merge it!

I threw a lot of 2017 and 2026 models at this and each one showed a few more edge cases than the last. If you have models that still give Hew trouble, then I'd love to know about them. You can use Help ▸ Report Bug or DM me a Google Drive link or I can DM you an upload link.

Small desk stand made from scrap: base, two dividers, and a vertical panel that mounts to the drawer box under my desk to hold a closed laptop and its dock.

Normally I’d print a dimensioned drawing and take it to the shop. This time I exported the model to my phone as a single file with the dimensions included. At the shop, my scrap wasn’t wide enough for the vertical panel. After another look at the model I realized the panel didn’t need the full width, so I cut it narrower.

Back home, I updated the model to match the as-built, using a photo of the actual scrap as the texture. First image: the SketchUp model on the monitor, the same model in AR on the left, and the real unit on the right. There’s a short video of it in the comments, where the cat showed up uninvited for final inspection.

Disclosure: I make the plugin I used for the export (ModelLink 3D Studio, the Print to p3DF command).

Happy to answer questions about the workflow either way.

Hi all, I'm an architect and the author of Engineering ToolBox, a SketchUp extension I built because I kept missing a handful of functions in my daily work.

It's organised into six groups of tools: surface and curve operations, selection and filtering, plus everyday modeling helpers. A few examples:

- Grid: set the size of one square, the total length and the units, then snap to it (the kind of grid AutoCAD has had from the start)

- Quickly Switch Unit: change units and length snapping without digging through SketchUp's settings

- View Toggle: switch between perspective and parallel view straight from the plugin

- Invisible Plane: turn a surface into a plane and keep your lines on it, even after rotating the camera

I'm recording a short video for each tool and adding them one by one. Overview of the plugin: https://youtu.be/inn70hjjm1E

I'd really like feedback: what functions do you miss in SketchUp that a plugin like this should have? And which of the ones above would you actually use?Hi all, I'm an architect and the author of Engineering ToolBox, a SketchUp extension I built because I kept missing a handful of functions in my daily work.
It's organised into six groups of tools: surface and curve operations, selection and filtering, plus everyday modeling helpers. A few examples:
- Grid: set the size of one square, the total length and the units, then snap to it (the kind of grid AutoCAD has had from the start)- Quickly Switch Unit: change units and length snapping without digging through SketchUp's settings- View Toggle: switch between perspective and parallel view straight from the plugin- Invisible Plane: turn a surface into a plane and keep your lines on it, even after rotating the camera
I'm recording a short video for each tool and adding them one by one. Overview of the plugin: https://youtu.be/_zN8k6L3Tgo
I'd really like feedback: what functions do you miss in SketchUp that a plugin like this should have? And which of the ones above would you actually use?

anybody here using this website (https://casoca.com.br/). i cant seem to download anything from the site no matter how many times i click on download. help!!

Trying to make a turned furniture foot. The profile works fine when I just use the push pull, but when I do the follow me and turn it 360 degrees it leaves out two sections.

I'm the developer, so I'm biased. Left is the SketchUp viewport, right is the render of the same view, generated inside SketchUp in under a minute, no GPU.

What I care about most is the AI not redesigning your model. It mostly holds, but small objects can still change, so I wouldn't use it for construction documents.

It runs on SketchUp 2023 and newer, Windows and Mac. You get 8 free credits on sign-in (2 renders) if you want to try it on your own scene. Happy to share the link if anyone wants it.

What would make something like this useful, or useless, in your workflow?

You can view the app here:

https://gitlab.com/adamdthomas/sketchcraft (Simply download, unzip and open the index.html)

If you have any issues, or enhancement ideas, please submit theme with the 'New item' button here:

https://gitlab.com/adamdthomas/sketchcraft/-/work_items

i have a sketchup model thats about 11mb. when i enable shadows, it instantly freezes, kicks me out, and litterally turning that on is not possible 😭 im making a project and shadows are pretty essential for the model. anything i can do?

I wanted to draw the plan of an apartment to scale and print it. The options were a CAD program with a 1990s command line, or a subscription. So I started building the tool I wanted.

OpenCalque is a 2D editor for floor plans and layouts with a Figma-style interface. "Calque" is French for tracing paper. Try it right now, nothing to install: https://opencalque.com

What it does today:

• Walls that behave like walls. They join at any angle, stay joined when you drag one, and doors and windows snap in and cut the opening.
• Rooms find themselves. Click inside closed walls and you get a named room with its area, which follows the walls when they move.
• Trace an existing plan. Drop a PDF or a photo, click two points you know the distance between, draw over it.
• DXF in and out, plus SVG.
• A component library (furniture, kitchen, bathroom, electrical symbols) and extensions that are data, not code, so installing one can't run anything.
• Optional AI assistant that edits the drawing from a description, with Claude, a local model through Ollama, or any OpenAI-compatible API. Nothing goes online unless you use it.
• English, French, Spanish, German.

The part I care most about: a drawing is plain JSON with a published schema, and every edit is a small JSON operation. The editor, the CLI and the assistant all use the same operations, so you can generate or modify a plan from a script.

No account, no telemetry, MIT licence.

• Repo and screenshots: https://github.com/laurent512/opencalque
• Downloads: https://github.com/laurent512/opencalque/releases/latest

I'd love feedback from people who draw plans for real: what would stop you from using this, and what's the first thing you'd miss?