I’ve been working on a lightweight point-cloud solution for SketchUp called FGId Point Cloud.

The goal is to display large point clouds directly over the SketchUp viewport while keeping SketchUp responsive, with the longer-term ambition of providing a lightweight alternative for point-cloud workflows.

The current Windows test version supports:

PLY
LAS / LAZ
E57
RGB point colors
GPU rendering
Up to several million displayed points
Point-size adjustment
SketchUp geometry occlusion
Point-cloud snapping / drawing tools currently under development

The point cloud is rendered by a separate GPU renderer synchronized in real time with the SketchUp camera. The latest version uses an OpenGL offscreen renderer and a native Windows transparent overlay.

I’m currently looking for a few people willing to test it on different Windows machines and GPUs.

This is an experimental beta, so feedback about compatibility, performance, E57/LAS files, GPU behavior and crashes is particularly useful.

Windows only for now.

Download:
https://nexdata.tarn.us/downloads/FGId_Point_Cloud_v3_15_9_Trial.rbz

If you test it, please post your SketchUp version, GPU, point-cloud format and approximate number of points along with your feedback.

Developed as part of my FGId

Gilles