poka.sh

 Docs

SKP

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SketchUp Preview.

At a glance
Original creator @Last Software, later Google and then Trimble
Purpose The native model file of the SketchUp 3D modelling program.
Extensions .skp
Poka parser poka-skp
Viewer poka-image-with-meta-viewer
Depth tier Parser with a shared viewer (see Depth tiers)
Breadth tier B4 Summary (see Breadth tiers)

How much Poka reads

B4 Summary. The container and metadata are read and summarised (counts, properties, structure), but the main content is not rendered.

Confidence: medium (the reviewer read the code). Basis: Reviewed 2026-10-16: poka-skp (lib.rs and the shim) and its 8 tests, all synthetic (the corpus has no .skp); one real SketchUp 2017 file outside the corpus was read: container Legacy, a 256x256 thumbnail, version 17.2.2555, no units, materials or tags. No real 2021 or later (ZIP) file was available, so that path rests on synthetic fixtures. Covers both containers; the 2020-and-earlier variant is thinner (version, container and thumbnail only).

What Poka does not read

  • The geometry in both containers (faces, edges, groups, components, scenes, cameras, dimensions, text) is not decoded; the preview is the saved thumbnail of about 256 px and cannot be orbited
  • 2020 and earlier: no units, materials, tags, styles or component list
  • 2021 and later: model.dat is only measured (labelled not decoded)
  • No real 2021 or later file has been tested

Background

Wikipedia reports that Google bought @Last Software in March 2006 and that Trimble acquired SketchUp from Google in 2012; the exact day for the latter is not consistent there. Poka has no SketchUp geometry reader. It shows the thumbnail SketchUp saved in the file, plus metadata such as the saving version, so the preview is a picture, not a 3D scene.

Versions

Version Identifier Poka Note
SketchUp 2021 and later UTF-16 header, then a ZIP archive Partly read Thumbnail and metadata are read from the ZIP entries; geometry is not (parsers/poka-skp/src/lib.rs).
SketchUp 2020 and earlier UTF-16 header, then an MFC archive Partly read The embedded model thumbnail is found after the version map; geometry is not read. Files without a thumbnail get metadata only.

Libraries

Libraries Poka uses or has assessed for this format, with the status, licence and language the registry records.

  • roxmltree (used; MIT OR Apache-2.0; Rust)
  • zip (used; MIT; Rust)
  • OpenSKP (candidate; MIT; unknown; https://github.com/iamahsanmehmood/openskp) — language: Python, TypeScript, C#/.NET, Dart, C++; Reverse-engineered reader/writer, no SketchUp SDK needed; reads 2021+ and 2013-2020 files (README reports 4 legacy versions failing); not affiliated with Trimble; no Rust port seen. Project is recent and self-validated.

Software that uses it

  • Trimble SketchUp

Sources