Convert SketchUp files to STL for 3D printing

How to convert SKP to STL

1. Pick your units: millimetres for almost every slicer, or inches if your software expects them.
2. Click Choose a .skp file above, or drag the file onto the box.
3. Check the result: triangle count, size, and whether the mesh is watertight.
4. Click Download .stl and open it in your slicer, such as Cura, PrusaSlicer or Bambu Studio.

Ready for the slicer, not just converted

A plain conversion can leave you with a model lying on its side, at the wrong scale, or floating off the bed. This one sorts those out for you:

• Upright. SketchUp uses Z as up, and so do slicers. The STL keeps SketchUp's axes, so what was the floor in SketchUp sits on the print bed.
• Real size. Coordinates are written in millimetres (or inches), whatever units the model was drawn in. A 1 m cube comes out as 1000 × 1000 × 1000 mm.
• On the bed. The lowest point is set to zero and the model is centred, so it lands in the middle of the build plate.

The watertight check

Most failed SketchUp prints come down to one thing: the model isn't a closed solid. SketchUp is happy with single faces and open shapes, but a slicer needs to know what's inside and what's outside. After converting, we weld touching corners together and count every edge that isn't shared by exactly two triangles. Zero open edges means the mesh is watertight. Anything else means there are gaps, and the count tells you roughly how much work it needs.

To test it, we converted a 20 MB house model saved in SketchUp 2026. It gave 326,385 triangles and 149,135 open edges: normal for a building made of single walls, and a clear sign it needs rebuilding before it will print. Our check on a closed 1 m test cube returns zero.

Fixing a model that isn't watertight

• Use solid groups. In SketchUp, select a group and look at Entity Info. A closed group is labelled "Solid Group"; a plain "Group" has holes or stray faces.
• Find the problems. The free Solid Inspector extension for SketchUp points to the stray edges, holes and inner faces that stop a group being solid.
• Print a part, not the scene. Delete the ground, people and anything you don't want printed before converting, and give walls real thickness.
• Let the slicer try. For a handful of small gaps, many slicers repair the mesh on import.

Other ways to get an STL from SketchUp

• SketchUp itself exports STL, including the free web version, and lets you export only the selected solid. It needs the file to open in your SketchUp first.
• innerscene's SKP to STL page also converts in the browser without uploading, and opens files up to 200 MB, twice our limit.
• Convert3D covers many more output formats if STL turns out not to be what you need.

Related tools

Need colors and textures too? The SKP to OBJ converter includes the materials and texture images. Want to look the model over first? Open it in the free SketchUp viewer. And if your SketchUp won't open the file because it was saved in a newer version, convert it to your SketchUp version (first file free) so you can make it solid before printing.