Free, Private, & (Potentially) Fast: Using Local AI (LLM) Models inside SketchUp

Free, Private, & (Potentially) Fast: Using Local AI (LLM) Models inside SketchUp

by Alex SchreyerNo Comments
The recently-released 3.3 version of my SketchUp AI Explorer (Experimental) extension now allows for an interesting and potentially (depending on your hardware) useful way to work with AI in SketchUp: You can now use local LLMs on your computer via a software like LM Studio as the AI provider for this extension. This approach is 100% free and only depends on the hardware capabilities of your local computer. This means you don't have to pay for tokens and you can even choose among a fairly large number of AI LLM models (including GPT-OSS, QWEN, GEMMA, DEEPSEEK,…). And nobody will ever train their AI systems on your prompts. One word of caution, though: This is largely an experimental approach and its effectiveness is very much dependent on your hardware (especially your GPU). But if you tweak this setup to your liking, it may open up new avenues. How Does This Work? To be able to do this, you will need two things: The Ai Explorer (Experimental) extension,...
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SketchUp 2026.2 Introduces New Analysis Possibilities

SketchUp 2026.2 Introduces New Analysis Possibilities

by Alex SchreyerNo Comments
With the release of SketchUp 2026.2, we are getting our hands on some new analysis tools that expand how we evaluate building models and streamline our project workflows. While the initial 2026 release focused heavily on live collaboration and harmonizing the user interface - and 2026.1 introduced SketchUp AI features - this mid-cycle update delivers several new features alongside highly requested efficiency tweaks (and bug fixes) for both SketchUp and LayOut. For those of us in architectural design and education, these updates offer an excellent toolset to dive deeper into environmental design without ever leaving our familiar conceptual modeling space. The new Analysis Hub and its initial set of tools Introducing the Analysis Hub & Advanced Shadows The headline feature of this release is the introduction of the Analysis Hub. With this toolset, Trimble is giving us a dedicated, central space to study building performance directly inside SketchUp. The first official tool to be featured in this hub is Advanced Shadows. Instead of just toggling...
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SketchUp 2026 Has Been Released!

SketchUp 2026 Has Been Released!

by Alex SchreyerNo Comments
SketchUp's new collaboration features (Image source: Trimble) With the 2026 release of SketchUp we are now getting hands-on ability to use more of the features that were teased at the 2024 SketchUp Basecamp Keynotes. While the 2025 version of SketchUp introduced PBR materials, the 2026 version now implements all of the cool collaboration features - like live viewing and commenting (illustrated in the image above). These collaboration features will be very useful for the sweet spot of architectural design where SketchUp shines: Conceptual modeling. With the new features, all members of a project can now engage in a live modeling exercise - complete with a shared visual experience and extensive commenting abilities. This should make it much easier to dial in the perfect design solution. The other major feature - in my view - is a MUCH BETTER LayOut interface. Both SketchUp and Layout (at least on Windows) now have the same user interface with similar visual elements and functionality. That makes not...
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SketchUp 2025 is Here!

SketchUp 2025 is Here!

by Alex SchreyerNo Comments
To properly introduce ThomThom - this version's scale figure - I decided to go with a Nordic look for this post's title image As of this week (February 25, actually), the latest iteration of SketchUp - version 2025.0 - is now available. Desktop users can click on the Help > Check for Update menu item and download it (or get it here) and iPad users can see new (version 7.0) features once the app updates. Users of the web app will apparently need to wait a little bit longer to see the new visualization features appear. What’s New in SketchUp? There are a bunch of new features, some of which were teased at last year's Basecamp/Dimensions conference. Let's dig into those... PBR Materials and Environments Now that SketchUp has a new graphics engine under the hood, it was apparently possible for the developers to implement not just ambient occlusion (which was introduced with SketchUp 2024), but also PBR (physically-based rendering) materials and environments. With those...
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Dark Mode is Here! And so is Bluesky.

Dark Mode is Here! And so is Bluesky.

by Alex SchreyerNo Comments
Well... at least on this web site it is. A few days ago, I went through the visual styles of this sketchupfordesign.com website and edited them so that dark mode is now available. You can see an example of this in the image below. One of my articles, now much easier on the eyes. As is good practice, I implemented this in a way that lets you - as the site reader - choose what you want to see. It is all based on what you have selected on your device as the preferred view style. I.e. if your operating system is set up to dark mode then you get dark mode. If not, then the site's design hasn't changed at all from before. Since I am hosting my SketchUp News viewer also on this site, it is now also available in dark mode, both on this site or in the SketchUp extension. See the image below for an example. The SketchUp News part of...
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