SketchUp Reviews & Insights

Score7.6 out of 10

192 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for SketchUp are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Business Problems Solved

SketchUp is a versatile tool that is widely used in various industries, including architecture, interior design, structural design, landscape design, and manufacturing design. Users have found SketchUp to be a fast and efficient solution for creating 3D models for designing buildings, furniture, equipment, and brochures. Its affordability and ease of learning make it accessible for both clients and consultants. SketchUp Pro, in particular, is a popular choice among organizations without extensive training. Real estate professionals rely on SketchUp to help sellers visualize different staging and marketing options for homes. It is utilized throughout all phases of design and construction documents for both residential and commercial projects. SketchUp excels at creating 3D drawings that meet various design requirements.

In addition to its architectural applications, SketchUp also finds use in other fields. For example, it provides visual assistance in test setups by allowing users to build 3D models that demonstrate the connection and transfer of forces. The software is internationally recognized for its extensive capabilities in making 3D designs easily, making it popular among architects, engineers, and industrial designers. In the construction industry, SketchUp is employed for design visualization and collaboration among team members. Nonprofit organizations utilize SketchUp to create visual representations of tradeshow displays, television studio set mockups, and graphics for printed publications. Designers in the furniture industry depend on SketchUp to quickly develop 3D models of office furniture and create prototypes.

Overall, SketchUp helps professionals from a range of disciplines connect better with their clients by providing a visual experience beyond traditional 2D drawings. It serves as the main visualization and 3D modeling tool for architects during client presentations, internal study sessions, and quick adjustments based on feedback. With its broad range of features and ease of use, SketchUp continues to be embraced by users across industries to enhance their design understanding and visualization capabilities.

SketchUp Reviews

8 Reviews

Enterprises (1,001+ employees)

SketchUp is a Great Conceptual Software to Start Your Design Process

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

October 7, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it as a design tool to study different massing, skin and materials on buildings. It allows us to also model context of buildings and through Enscape, get renderings for clients. This allows us to pick the best design options and come up with solutions before putting our final design into Revit for documentation.

Pros

Quickly models massings
Quickly looks at materials
Renderings views well

Cons

SketchUp does not do well with modeling curved surfaces.
SketchUp does not let two people work in the model at once.
It is very hard to model complex geometries in SketchUp.

Likelihood to Recommend

SketchUp is great for individually studying options for building design. It is an awesome conceptual tool to be able to quickly model and manipulate a building to study different designs. It is not good for complex geometries, especially curves. Surfaces have a hard time registering and cutting into one another. It also eventually needs to go into Revit to be more realistic as it is not good as a documentation tool.

Verified User

Professional (Architecture & Planning company, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

9 years of experience

SketchUp Review

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

December 20, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I'm a designer for my organization and use SketchUp to design the work for different use cases on 3D software and interior design.

Pros

layout functionality
surface rendering
third party plugins

Cons

User Interface
Price
Usability

Likelihood to Recommend

I've specifically used SketchUp for architecture projects, interior design projects, and renderings. It's incredibly well suited for these projects specifically with its seamless plugins and ability to learn how to use them.

Verified User

Professional in Research & Development (Internet company, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

A start-up software to learn and create 3D drawings

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

May 7, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It has been widely used in multiple disciplines, especially those that are associated with design including architecture and interior design, structural design, landscape design, manufacture design, etc. SketchUp helps to create 3D drawings for any given design to satisfy varying design requirements.

To provide a visual assistant to the test setup, I have used SketchUp to build a 3D model of the test unit along with a lab picture to show how the elements in the test setup were connected and transferred forces from the applied load. Apart from modeling, SketchUp was also used for sketching a building in my course project. Following the design requirements, I created sketches of plan-view and elevation view of the designed building in SketchUp to build a 3D model of the design. Based on these models, my project team and I can have a 3D visualization of the AutoCAD drawings and better understand the structure of the building which helped improve the design eventually.

Pros

SketchUp is relatively easy to start learning how to make 3D graphs compared to other programs that are designed for specific disciplines.
SketchUp is a free software for all users to download and use.
SketchUp drawings can be directly imported to some more advanced software to further edit.

Cons

Built-in models and elements are limited in this free-edition software to offer help in the computer-aided design.

Likelihood to Recommend

SketchUp is a good start-up software for beginner to make 3D drawings since it offers basic elements and models for design. Additionally, tremendous tutorials of SketchUp are available online and this free software does not have a big footprint, therefore it will not consume lots of memory and RAM of a user's computer. Limited sources for design constrain this software's broader usage.

Bin Cai

Graduate Research Assistant in Engineering at Iowa State University (Higher Education, 5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile

SketchUp Review

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

February 6, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SketchUp is one of the tools we use to generate quick concepts that require fast representations. I mostly use it during concept and schematic design phases where creativity is stronger than technical requirements. Typically we use Sketchup for architectural representations of interiors and exterior environments.

Pros

Easy import/export features with CAD files.
A very intuitive set of tools. Requires fewer operations to generate a solid volume than other software.
Instant feedback in sections and cut-throughs in modeling.

Cons

Basic tools are limited, I wish they'd have more features like a mirror function, chamfer or round edges function.
Backup copies for file crashes could be improved.

Likelihood to Recommend

More appropriate if you need to sketch and represent something quick or for a small project. Not suited for large projects that require documentation.

Leandro Lujan

Technical Designer at Gensler (Architecture & Planning, 5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

8 years of experience

View profile

A Must-Have Product for any Designer

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

December 17, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SketchUp creates comprehensive, organized, responsive models used to generate line drawings, general marketing content, and an assortment of renderings with the help of 3rd party crowd-sourced tools.

Pros

Quick product creation with use of components, grouping, and the unique hide rest of model tool
Great Maxwell add-on application to create photo-realistic renderings

Cons

Some sudden application shutdowns make auto-save an important feature to turn on
Complex warehouse models greatly reduces the speed of the model. In some cases, this makes the model unusable

Likelihood to Recommend

Well-suited for manufacturers, architectural firms, design build firms and contractors. It may not be appropriate for any type of engineering firm due to the requirements for them to be very precise.

Verified User

Manager in Product Management (Building Materials company, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

Design was never so easy and with professional results.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

September 7, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Sketchup is used in the design and production department, all the designers in the area manage the program to make the 3d designs of furniture for offices, it is one of the most useful tools to carry out the design of different products in a quick way for later proceed to make the prototypes.

Pros

The side toolbar is very complete and very intuitive.
Your 3d warehouse market is full of very well developed 3d models that are very useful.
It allows you to incorporate extensions and plugins that improve the performance of the program and its options and commands.
Allows you to import and export files from different software, which makes it very flexible to work together with other programs such as Autocad, 3d max, Blender.

Cons

The sandbox toolbar is not very useful does not meet expectations.
It does not have specialized commands in the parametric design, so you should always look for extensions and plugins that fill that gap.
The layout and style builder has not left me satisfied with the professional result.
The default textures are of layout professional quality, so you should always look for external links.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is very useful and efficient to design simple objects quickly and efficiently, obtaining very nice results, it allows you to export the model to other more powerful software and export and import plans to make the work very precise. It does not meet the requirements for complex models with curved geometries and parametric designs, you should use extensions and it is very possible that you have errors in the model and do not opt for the expected result.

Michael Schell

Senior Project Manager in Product Management at IKEA Group (Retail, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

View profile

Great Modeling Software for Simple Needs

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

November 22, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our business uses different types of 3D modeling software, but we use SketchUp primarily for on-the-fly drawings or to quickly edit previously drawn renderings. It's great if you want to quickly make a drawing and not necessarily need a full-fledged dimensioned engineering drawing. We find it very intuitive and user-friendly.

Pros

Very user-friendly.
Easy to learn and simple software.
Lots of models to use in the 3D warehouse to save time.
There are lots of resources for SketchUp to support the user.

Cons

Exporting/importing files from other programs may not always be compatible.
I'm an engineer and I feel SketchUp is more geared towards architects. However, I still find it useful for certain aspects of my job such as creating renderings.
Has a tendency to slow down as the file size gets larger. Apparently, it runs on an outdated engine that has trouble with very heavy models.

Likelihood to Recommend

SketchUp is good if you are look for simplistic, quick models that don't need to have a lot of detail. We use this to draw out our preliminary ideas that we share to the whole team. However, once we have a design hashed out, we use a more powerful 3D software to do realistic renderings and engineering drawings. Having said that, I would skip SketchUp if you need realistic renderings or need to create complex models with a lot of texture and detail.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Building Materials company, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

SketchUp for the casual 3D model builder

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

September 25, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SketchUp Pro is being used by my entire organization to provide a simple 3D modeling tool that does not require in depth training to understand. All of the buttons on the toolbar are self-explanatory or can be learned through a brief tutorial video. The focus of our organization is not to create or manipulate 3D models so a more powerful software is not needed. Simple modeling can convey to our owners and customers the general picture of what we are trying to build.

Pros

Simplicity. Anyone who is familiar with a computer can jump headfirst into SketchUp and be proficient with its use within an hour.
Intuitive button design/layout. Creating 3D objects from 2D shapes is easy with the push/pull tool. More complex 3D modeling software can get overwhelming with all of the buttons on the toolbar.
3D modeling warehouse. There is an online database that allows users to see what other SketchUp users have created and download their own copy. Sharing objects with other users dramatically reduces the time required to build a very detailed model.

Cons

Hiding edge lines. Since most users need SketchUp to model a 3D object of some kind, it doesn't make sense for there to be visible edge lines at all intersecting faces. There should be an option to automatically hide edge lines once the model gets more complex.
Curved faces on a plane out of horizontal. Due to the simplicity of the software, there is no easy way to create a curved line on a plane that is not standard (vertical or horizontal face). Pushing or pulling the 2D shape into the 3D world, creates a bunch of small straight segments of lines rather than maintaining the smooth curve.

Likelihood to Recommend

SketchUp is best suited for a company or individual that needs a modeling software that is simple to use and easy to get started. No upfront training is needed to get started and the software can be expanded to add additional functionality for the experienced user. Any company or individual that has extensive experience in 3D modeling will find this software too simplistic to be helpful.

Tony Grasso

Project Engineer in Product Management at Mortenson (Construction, 5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile

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SketchUp for the casual 3D model builder

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

September 25, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Simplicity. Anyone who is familiar with a computer can jump headfirst into SketchUp and be proficient with its use within an hour.
Intuitive button design/layout. Creating 3D objects from 2D shapes is easy with the push/pull tool. More complex 3D modeling software can get overwhelming with all of the buttons on the toolbar.
3D modeling warehouse. There is an online database that allows users to see what other SketchUp users have created and download their own copy. Sharing objects with other users dramatically reduces the time required to build a very detailed model.

Cons

Hiding edge lines. Since most users need SketchUp to model a 3D object of some kind, it doesn't make sense for there to be visible edge lines at all intersecting faces. There should be an option to automatically hide edge lines once the model gets more complex.
Curved faces on a plane out of horizontal. Due to the simplicity of the software, there is no easy way to create a curved line on a plane that is not standard (vertical or horizontal face). Pushing or pulling the 2D shape into the 3D world, creates a bunch of small straight segments of lines rather than maintaining the smooth curve.

Likelihood to Recommend

Tony Grasso

Project Engineer in Product Management at Mortenson (Construction, 5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile