Trimble has brought Gaussian Splatting directly into SketchUp. A new Gaussian Splats extension, released through the Extension Warehouse as part of SketchUp Labs, lets users import, view, and manipulate photorealistic radiance fields inside their models. While this has been in private beta for a long time, it’s one of the clearest signals yet that splats are moving from research demos into mainstream AEC workflows. SketchUp is one of the most widely used 3D modeling tools in architecture, design, and construction.
SketchUp counts millions of users, and dropping a captured environment into the same workspace where a building gets modeled collapses a step that previously required jumping between separate point cloud, photogrammetry, or scan applications.
This is a visualization and manipulation tool, not a trainer. SketchUp is not generating splats from your photos. It imports files you have already produced elsewhere. Supported formats are broad, covering .ply, .splat, .spz, and .sklat, alongside .lcc, the XGRIDS format. SketchUp also introduces its own .sklat (SketchUp Splat) file, which is where it stores any edits you make.
After importing, a five step configuration wizard walks through Crop, Orient, Align, Scale, and Position. The Crop step automatically finds the densest region of points and boxes around it, so you are not hunting for your subject in a cloud of stray Gaussians. Orient and Align snap the capture to SketchUp’s axes using planes detected from recognized faces in the splat. The Scale step lets you pick two points and type a real world dimension to rescale the whole environment.
Once a splat is in the model, the Gaussian Splatting Manager and toolbar handle the rest. Three display modes trade quality for speed. Rendering Mode for full quality presentation, Modeling Mode, which disables blending to expose individual splats for snapping, and Point Cloud Mode for the fastest navigation. One click blending presets let you fade between SketchUp geometry and the splat at 0%, 50%, 75%, or 100%, and a Picking Priority toggle decides whether the drawing tools snap to splat data or to native geometry. There are dedicated Move, Rotate, Crop, and Scale tools built to work with splats rather than SketchUp’s standard geometry, plus a Selection Box that can copy or cut part of a capture out as a brand new splat entity.
The extension is Windows only, there is no macOS support at launch, and needs SketchUp 2024 or higher with an active Pro, Pro Scan, Pro Advance Workflows, or Studio subscription. New users without a capture of their own can load bundled sample files to try the workflow, and files under 400MB can be dragged straight into the manager.
SketchUp does not bake splat edits into the standard .skp geometry. Your changes live in a linked .sklat file, so sharing work means sending both the .skp and the .sklat together, otherwise the recipient sees the model without the splat.
When a tool as established as SketchUp ships native splat handling, even as a Labs experiment, it normalizes Gaussian Splatting as a working format for practitioners. The .lcc and .spz support, the scale correction workflow, and the snap and trace modeling tools all read as features built for people who need to actually design against a capture. Learn more here.
