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Use Add Location and access satellite imagery and terrain maps for real life data 3D building context with Add Location With the new 3D Buildings import function in Add Location , you can now pull existing buildings directly into your SketchUp model in just a few clicks. It’s seamless, accurate, and works across Desktop, iPad, and Web—no plugins, no guesswork, no relying on satellite images or site photos. But this isn’t just about dropping in geometry. It’s about gaining immediate, meaningful context—understanding how your design interacts with its surroundings, the site, and the city itself. Alongside high-resolution satellite imagery and terrain, this upgrade gives you access to critical information that can help you make your design choices. Why it matters: Stronger client communication : Show exactly how your design fits into its real-world setting, surrounded by neighbouring buildings. This realistic backdrop makes ideas easier to grasp, builds trust, and accelerates approvals. Smarter site and urban planning : See your structure in context from day one. Test massing, streetscape impact, and integration with the neighbourhood before you’ve even started detailed modeling. Early insights for performance : Place your design in its true environment for sun and shadow studies, optimizing daylight and shading strategies from the outset. Then take it further in Sefaira  for advanced energy, daylight, and HVAC analysis. Add Location updates for iPad Users can customize output settings. Add Location in SketchUp for iPad has also received upgrades, bringing parity with the Desktop and Web experience. Achieve flexibility with your iPad Control contour and tessellation density using the mesh density slider. Import terrain with adjustable detail and orientation for precise modeling. Low-density option for lightweight, faster files. High-density option for detailed, accurate terrain. Bridge the Physical and Digital with Scan-to-Design (SketchUp iPad Pro) Select from multiple outputs  to match your workflow, balancing accuracy with performance. Capture micro-level context  for renovations, remodels, and detailed interiors. Start modeling faster with scan data optimized for your project needs. The true power of Scan-to-Design lies in its variety of outputs and how quickly it helps you get started. Understanding these choices allows you to capture the data you need for your specific workflow, optimizing both detail and file performance. Use Mesh to capture details for complex spaces and shapes mesh scan of a kitchen interior. The Mesh output is great for quick conceptual modeling and lightweight file performance. It helps deliver a high-detail, textured, triangulated mesh . Architects can document existing facades, historic preservation projects, and intricate structures with precision. Interior designers can capture curved walls, decorative elements, and unique detailing with accuracy and nuance. Pro Tip Start your project on iPad to capture existing conditions, then import 3D Building context to see your design in its full urban setting. By integrating broad urban context with fine-grained interior detail, you’re not just modeling—you’re creating visions grounded in reality. Try Add Location in SketchUp 2025 or in the latest version of SketchUp for iPad today!

It is difficult or impossible to control many of the variables that affect building performance. Each building has variations in usage, occupant behaviour, and external factors like weather patterns that can change over time. Given the many parameters that influence a building after the build, how can architects anticipate all likely scenarios and truly deliver optimum performance? Architects can utilise data on construction costs, schedules, and constructability, often integrated through BIM and common data environments like Trimble Connect, to ensure designs are buildable and within budget. More Control, More Choices We now have so many amazing new technologies to make buildings perform better. Because of this, design is more important and complicated than ever. Even the best new building tech won't work well if it's not designed and put together properly from the start. Good design means everything fits together perfectly for great results. Factoring shading, daylight and weather conditions will impact energy efficiency Sustainable Design for Buildings Buildings are responsible for as much as 39% of global carbon emissions and building owners should consider retrofitting existing buildings. It is important for us to find ways to reduce our global emissions and we can do so by prioritising how we can improve the performance for new buildings. Efficient buildings can help reduce operating costs The UN expects global urbanization to increase by nearly 2.5 billion people between now and 2050, increasing the concentration of people in our cities by over 60%. All these people need homes and buildings to live and work. With such a phenomenal amount of building activity ahead of us, we need to get to very high-performance standards quickly. To achieve net-zero emissions, rapid transformation will be required across all industries. Architects should design buildings that can optimise energy efficiency and also learn and adapt to occupant preferences and changing environmental conditions. By making smart technologies an integral part of the initial design concept, architects can ensure that the building's intelligence truly enhances comfort, productivity, and sustainability, rather than being an afterthought. How forms determine performance Building shape/form alone can influence energy use by 10 to 15% on a typical building project. Combine that with the influence of glazing, which can often influence building performance in the 15-25% range. When considering daylight performance, we can create buildings that deliver a much better occupant experience without additional capital cost. In the case of the Iowa Nest project , changing the building’s form cut construction costs in half and achieved a 30% reduction in heating and cooling loads. Designing with sustainable budgets in mind Sometimes, we need to make choices around tradeoffs, as in reality, to be most building owners do not instantaneously have budgets for installing the highest-performing technology. It is important to factor options when deploying capital on building projects. This can be done in the planning stages by considering options that carefully balance all the conflicting priorities using the least possible capital. Tools that unlock the future of sustainable building design Software like PreDesign helps architects / designers make good decisions from the earliest stages, while Sefaira provides in-depth performance analyses on building designs. Sefaira is a software that integrates with SketchUp to provide energy, comfort, and daylight metrics for your designs When we combine advances in cloud computing, building physics, and user interaction design, we can make software that can analyze design performance in real time so that it can be embedded directly into the design process itself. This makes it easier than ever for the architect to use important building performance metrics to create a building design that is sustainable, functional, and beautiful.  At its heart, Trimble's ecosystem revolves around the concept of a Common Data Environment (CDE) . This is a centralised, cloud-based platform where all project-related data – from design models and drawings to financial records and field reports – is stored, organized, and shared. The goal is to eliminate data silos, reduce manual data entry, and ensure that everyone involved in a project is working with the most current and accurate information. To learn more about Trimble Connect and Connected Construction, please reach out to us for a personalised consult. If you are interested in Sefaira, read more here .

In SketchUp, Groups and Components help organise geometry efficiently. While they may seem similar, they serve distinct purposes: Groups act as individual containers for geometry, keeping elements separate and easy to manage. They are ideal for unique parts of your model that won’t be repeated elsewhere. Components function similarly but with a key advantage—when you edit one instance of a component, all instances update simultaneously. This makes them perfect for repeated elements like windows, furniture, or structural components. If you need a variation of an existing component, you have two options: Right-click → “Make Unique” to create an independent copy that can be modified without affecting the original. Explode the component and create a new one from the modified geometry. SketchUp Skill Builder: Groups vs Components Working with Components When you transform geometry into a component, your 3D model has all the following behaviors and capabilities: Your component is reusable. The component geometry becomes separate from any geometry to which it's currently connected. (This is similar to groups .) Anytime you edit your component, you can edit the component instance or the definition. If you like, you can make your component stick to a specific plane (by setting its gluing plane) or cut a hole in a face (by setting its cutting plane). You can associate metadata, such as advanced attributes and IFC classification types, with the component. Classifying Objects introduces classification systems and how you can use them with SketchUp components. Keep in mind: If you are going to use something more than once in your model, make a Component of it. This applies to copying things. Make a Component of it first, then copy the Component. Draw everything on Layer0. (This is the default layer, so unless you actively change it, everything you draw will be on this layer.) Before you copy a Group, first consider making it into a Component. Context click > Make Unique if you need to change some components to be different than others of the same definition. When you explode all of a component, it (they) turns back into basic geometry and the definition can be purged from the model. When you are modeling a Component in a working file with other Components: Right-click [context click] on the Component and select Save As . SketchUp will let you point to the folder in which you wish to store the component, and it will use the name of the Component as the default filename for the external file. Component naming Creating Components during modeling is quite fluid in SketchUp. SketchUp provides auto naming of Components to speed up Component creation. The default name provided in the create Component dialog is the word ‘Component’ followed by a ‘#’ and an incremented number (for example Component#48). The numeric value keeps incrementing to assure that each new Component is named uniquely. But when a Component requires a specific product name, the Component name can be changed. Select the Component in the Component Browser and select the Edit Tab, or use the Entity Info dialog. The Definition name is the actual Component name. In the Component Browser, the definition name is the name shown in the top text field of the Components dialog, and the Definition in the Entity Info dialog. See the article File management, uploading & branding for more discussion on naming components from product manufacturers. In the Entity Info dialog box, the Name field is only a description for a particular instance of the Component in the model, it is not the actual name of the Component definition. That is stored in the Definition box. Editing a component is like working on another SketchUp model within the main model. SketchUp uses in-place component editing. This allows you to see the rest of the model in context for reference while you make changes to the component. When editing a component, the limit of the current context for the component being edited is shown by a gray bounding box. The axes directions and origin for the component are shown with a red, green, blue icon. The rest of the model is low lighted (dimmed). You cannot change any of the rest of the model outside of the current context, but you can infer to anything throughout the entire model. Component nesting and context Components can contain other Components and Groups in addition to faces and edges. This is called nesting. Each time a Component (or Group) is included within another Component or Group, it is nested one level within the outer context. Context means the immediate container for entities (edges, faces, groups, components, dimensions, text, etc.). A model is the largest context that SketchUp can have; it is the uppermost level of organization. When entities are selected and included in a Component, the Component becomes the context for those entities. If a Component is made from three other Components, that Component becomes the context for those three sub-entities. Fig. 1 In Fig. 1, the orange lines indicate the outer bounds of the main Component’s context. The blue lines indicate the first nesting level of sub-Components within the main Component. Each blue box represents the context for the items within the box. Finally the magenta lines indicate the second nesting level down of sub-Components within the first (blue) nesting level. Notice that the magenta objects are within context of each of the nested blue components. Context editing components and nested components Components and groups may be edited (modified) at any time by Right clicking [context clicking] on the object and selecting Edit from the context menu, or by double clicking the select tool on the object. To finish editing, right click [context click] in white space outside the bounding box and select Close Group or single click the select tool outside the bounding box. Editing a component is like working on another SketchUp model within the main model. SketchUp uses in-place component editing. This allows you to see the rest of the model in context for reference while you make changes to the component. When editing a component, the limit of the current context for the component being edited is shown by a gray bounding box. The axes directions and origin for the component are shown with a red, green, blue icon. When editing a component, the rest of the model is low lighted (dimmed). You cannot change any of the rest of the model outside of the current context, but you can infer to anything throughout the entire model. Adding your design to 3D Warehouse It is helpful to develop a template file into which you import a component to get it ready for upload to 3D Warehouse. This template file does several things for you. It should have standard views to keep all your product lines consistent. Component and file naming Proper naming will allow your designs to be easily accessible At a minimum four things should be addressed: Product number or SKU Manufacturer name Product line Product name In the SketchUp world, a component has a component name when inside a model, but might want to have a slightly different file name when saved outside of the model, and also be known by a different title in 3D Warehouse. It is best to think from the inside outward, with the first consideration being the component name. Next, apply any metadata labels and information attached to the component. Then look at the filename as it is saved to your computer drive. And lastly, design a marketing piece on 3D Warehouse. The following illustration should help you envision this path. SketchUp Studio and IFC Support SketchUp Studio is the most advanced version of SketchUp, designed specifically for professionals working in BIM and construction. By leveraging Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) components in SketchUp Studio, users can bridge the gap between conceptual 3D modeling and structured BIM processes, making it a valuable tool for architects, engineers, and construction professionals. SketchUp components can be classified using IFC properties, allowing them to be exported into BIM workflows while retaining metadata. When you assign an IFC classification (e.g., IfcWall, IfcDoor, IfcWindow) to a SketchUp component, it becomes recognizable in other BIM software that supports the IFC format. SketchUp Studio supports IFC import/export, allowing collaboration with BIM platforms like Revit, ArchiCAD, and Tekla. Using IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) components in SketchUp is beneficial for BIM (Building Information Modeling) workflows because SketchUp models can stay lightweight while still integrating with structured BIM processes. 1. Reduced File Size & Improved Performance SketchUp models can become heavy when detailed geometry is used. IFC classification allows you to retain important BIM metadata without increasing file size unnecessarily. Instead of exporting high-polygon models, IFC ensures that only relevant structured data is included. 2. Seamless BIM Integration Without Overloading SketchUp SketchUp’s strength lies in its fast, intuitive 3D modeling, but it isn't a full BIM tool. IFC components allow SketchUp users to contribute to BIM workflows without needing to convert entire models into large, complex BIM files. IFC classification ensures compatibility with other BIM software SketchUp Components & AutoCAD BIM (Revit) SketchUp models can be imported into Revit via DWG, IFC, or as Revit families (RFA files). Using Trimble Connect, SketchUp components can be linked to BIM projects for coordination and clash detection. Revit treats SketchUp components as massing elements or generic objects, but if properly classified using IFC, they integrate better into BIM models.