How to open SketchUp files

What an SKP file is

SKP is the file format of SketchUp, the modeling program from Trimble that architects, woodworkers and designers draw with. An SKP holds the model’s faces and edges, its groups and components, materials, tags and scenes. The format is Trimble’s own, and few programs besides SketchUp read it.

Open it: SketchUp for Web

SketchUp for Web is SketchUp in the browser, and its free plan costs nothing, for non-commercial use. Sign in with a free Trimble ID, and from its Home screen open a model saved on your computer.

The free plan keeps your models in Trimble Connect, Trimble’s cloud storage, with 10 GB of room and one project. It opens, turns, measures and edits a model like the desktop program. Of 3D files it takes in only SKP, and it saves SKP and STL.

SKP to STL

1. Open the model in SketchUp for Web.
2. Open its menu, choose Download, then STL, and confirm.

Check the STL before you print it. An STL carries no unit and a slicer reads its numbers as millimeters, so a model saved in inches comes in 25.4 times too small: the STL viewer offers inches for a model under 10 units across. And SketchUp draws faces, not solids, so a model that looks closed can have a gap, or a face turned inside out. Open the STL in the STL viewer: it gives the size and the volume, and marks open edges and flipped faces. STL repair closes small holes and turns flipped faces.

Look at it without SketchUp

• SketchUp Viewer for the desktop is gone. Trimble stopped offering it for Windows and Mac on April 22, 2025. A copy already installed keeps working.
• On an iPhone or iPad, the free SketchUp app views models without a subscription.
• Autodesk Viewer shows SKP files in the browser too, with an Autodesk account. The file is uploaded to Autodesk’s servers and kept for 30 days unless you delete it.

Old and new SKP files

Since SketchUp 2021, an SKP file carries no version of its own: the versions Trimble still supports open each other’s files, newer or older. A SketchUp from before then can refuse a newer file (“File Created in a Newer Version”) or open it with parts missing, and the current desktop program no longer saves for those old versions. SketchUp for Web is always the latest, so it opens them all.

What opens here

• The STL viewer opens the STL that SketchUp downloads, measures it and checks it for a print.
• STL repair mends what SketchUp’s faces leave open.
• STL to 3MF packs it for a slicer in millimeters, and STL to STEP turns it into a solid for a CAD program.

Drop an SKP file on any page and it says what to do with it. Nothing you open on tab3d is uploaded.

What this guide says about other programs was checked on their makers' own websites on October 21, 2026. tab3d is not affiliated with any of them.

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