Experimental · X-3Software: For SketchUpBeta

Preflight

Lighter files, faster modeling, quicker renders.

SketchUp models get heavy and disorganized as they grow: hidden materials, reversed faces, nesting nobody needs, and textures far larger than the surface they sit on. Preflight finds all of it, shows you where, and fixes what you check, so the model is faster to work in and quicker to render. It reports before it acts, and it never saves: close without saving and the file is exactly as it was.

Preflight is in beta.
Email us for access.

Request beta access

$149 at launch. One payment, yours for good, every future update included.

The Preflight Scan Settings window, with the scope choices and the Materials fixes

Manage your licenses

Release a machine or find your license key.

Your account

One real model, one run

A 265.7 MB production file with 3,724 definitions, 787,058 faces, 688 materials, and 33 scenes.

266 → 106 MB

60% lighter

92%

Less texture data, 143.4 MB down to 11.0 MB

702

Identical groups folded into shared components

Under an hour

For the whole cleanup, on a Mac

Figures from Preflight’s own Postflight Report. A full cleanup with every fix on except moving geometry onto one tag and erasing hidden faces and groups, on SketchUp 2026 and an Apple M4 Pro Mac mini.

What slows a model down

Materials nobody can see

A material on the group, another on the component inside it, another on the group inside that. Only the innermost one renders. The rest is weight.

Faces the wrong way around

Reversed geometry renders badly and takes material on the side nobody sees. Preflight turned 15,376 of them the right way around in one run, swapping their materials with them.

Scaled instead of edited

A group scaled because it was quicker than editing the geometry. Every texture on it is now the wrong size, and so is everything nested inside.

Groups inside groups

Nesting with no purpose makes the model hard to navigate and multiplies every other problem in it. Redundant wrappers are collapsed, and any tag they carried moves to the object inside.

Copies that should be components

The same object pasted again and again as separate groups, each stored in full. In one run, Preflight folded 702 identical groups into shared components.

Heavy geometry, flagged

Objects with too many faces, or detail too fine to see, are listed biggest first and walked one at a time. Nothing is changed. You decide what to proxy and what to simplify.

Screenshots used as textures

A 4 MB PNG screenshot mapped onto a label six inches across. In our test file, texture data was more than half the weight, which is why cleaning geometry alone barely moves it. Preflight resamples oversize textures, and in one run cut texture data by 92%.

Texture paths pointing nowhere

Textures linked to files that have moved or never existed on disk, so every render hunts for them. Preflight exports every texture to one real folder and relinks them all.

How it works

Four steps, and you can stop after the first one.

  1. 01

    Scan

    Reads the model and lists what is wrong, grouped by kind and counted in objects rather than faces. Writes nothing at all.

  2. 02

    Walk

    Puts each problem on screen one at a time, with the camera framed on it. Seeing a misaligned face beats reading about one.

  3. 03

    Fix

    Runs the fixes you checked, on the whole model, a selection, or the group you’re in, repeating until a pass changes nothing. On a 266 MB production file, the whole cleanup takes under an hour on a Mac. Windows takes about two and a half times as long.

  4. 04

    Report

    A single HTML file, the Postflight Report, saved next to the model. It separates what was changed from what is switched off, what needs your decision, and what is recorded for information.

The full Scan Settings window, from Scope through Styles

Scroll the window to see every section

Scan Settings: scope, then materials, geometry, heavy geometry, tags, hierarchy, scale and axes, duplicate groups, and styles.

Every fix is a checkbox

Scan Settings holds every fix, grouped by area, with a fresh install’s defaults already set. Any fix that alters how the model looks, replaces placed images, or can’t be taken back carries a tag on its row, and every one can be switched off. Presets save and load a whole setup.

▲ Changes appearance
The render will differ, on purpose. Five of these ship switched on. Uncheck any of them to keep that part of the model as it is.
▲ Replaces placed images
Placed images become textured faces.
Permanent
Removes something for good. Closing without saving is still the way back, because Preflight never saves.

For V‑Ray users, this is the part that matters

Converting to V‑Ray? Each material looks for its texture where it was first loaded, so moved files become broken links mid-render. Run Preflight first with texture export on. It writes every texture to a real folder and relinks the model. Then convert.

Why you can trust it with your model

  • It reports before it acts. The scan writes nothing at all, so you can look before deciding anything.
  • It protects your original file. It never saves on its own, and it gives you the option to save a backup copy. Closing without saving leaves the file exactly as it was. That’s the recovery path, and it doesn’t depend on undo behaving itself on a model this size.
  • Every fix is switchable. Anything that changes appearance, replaces placed images, or can’t be undone is tagged in the window before it runs.
  • It leaves dynamic components alone. Nothing is written inside them, since they rebuild their own contents.
  • It asks about anything it can’t settle. What the geometry can’t decide on its own is listed for you, not changed.
  • Counted in objects. A count of 96,592 back faces is not something anyone can act on. The same finding shown as 161 objects is an afternoon of work.
  • Mac and Windows. SketchUp 2021 or later. No compiled parts, and nothing fetched at runtime.

What it doesn’t do

  • It can’t undo an old save. It can’t repair a file that has already been broken and saved over.
  • It doesn’t simplify geometry. There’s no polygon reduction of the kind Skimp does. Instead, heavy objects are flagged and listed biggest first, ready for a tool like Skimp to work on.
  • Some fixes change appearance on purpose. Five that ship switched on do: painting visible back faces, repainting inward backs, resampling textures, merging coplanar faces, and removing stray edges. Each is tagged in the window and can be switched off.
  • Resampled textures keep less detail. Only textures over the limits you set are resampled (2,048 px on the long edge by default), never below 512 px, and a result is kept only if it’s smaller than the original. Each still appears at the same scale. Once the model is saved, the original, larger images are no longer in it.
  • It doesn’t reach inside a renderer’s own data. Anything already converted to V‑Ray isn’t repointed. Run Preflight first.

Try it free

The free version is the same download. It scans, walks, and reports on any model, and runs three fixes for good, each with its own menu item you can bind to a key in SketchUp’s Shortcuts preferences. A key acts on the selection; with nothing selected, on the group you’re in; failing that, on the whole model. One undo reverts it.

FeatureFreeFull · $149
Scan, including heavy geometryIncludedIncluded
Walk the ProblemsIncludedIncluded
Scan report and ReadmeIncludedIncluded
FixesThreeAll 29
Full cleanup, model-wideOne, when you confirm your emailUnlimited
Postflight Report after a cleanupWith your one free cleanupIncluded
MachinesAnyTwo per license
UpdatesIncludedEvery future update included

The three free fixes

Through the menu, or with shortcut keys.

  • Merge coplanar faces

    Joins neighboring faces that lie in the same plane into one face and removes the line between them. Faces painted differently, on different tags, or with textures that don’t line up are left alone.

    ▲ Changes appearance

  • Erase stray edges

    Removes loose lines that don’t border any face. Scan Settings calls this “Remove stray edges.”

    ▲ Changes appearance

  • Geometry to Untagged

    Moves faces and edges off their own tags onto Untagged, so tags live on groups and components, where they belong. Scan Settings calls this “Move geometry onto one tag” and lets you choose the tag.

    ▲ Changes appearance
All 29 fixes28 checkboxes and one sub-fix, in the window’s order. Three are free; the other 26 need a license. Tagged the way the plugin tags them, and on unless marked off.

Materials

  1. 01
    Convert placed images to textured faces.
    ▲ Replaces placed images
  2. 02
    Orient reversed faces, including solids that are inside out. Turns faces the right way around and swaps their materials with them.
  3. 03
    Strip container materials nothing inherits. Removes paint from a group or component when nothing inside it shows that paint.
  4. 04
    Push visible container material onto faces. Paints a group’s material onto the faces that were displaying it, so the group itself can be left unpainted.
  5. 05
    Merge duplicate materials (respects render engine settings). Materials with different render-engine settings, such as V‑Ray, are kept apart.
  6. 06
    Paint visible back faces to match the front.
    ▲ Changes appearance
  7. 07
    Repaint inward backs that disagree with the front, closed solids only.
    ▲ Changes appearance
  8. 08
    Mirror a transparent front onto its bare back, closed solids only.
  9. 09
    Remove materials painted onto edges.
  10. 10
    Export every texture to a folder and relink to model.
    Off by default, since it needs a folder chosen first
  11. 11
    Resample oversize textures and re-encode. Shrinks textures far bigger than they need to be and keeps each at the same scale. Settings: max edge 2,048 px, flag over 200 KB, max density 10 px per inch of model surface, JPEG quality 30. Never below 512 px, and a result is kept only if it’s smaller.
    ▲ Changes appearance

Geometry

  1. 12
    Merge coplanar faces. Option: ignore UV mapping, faster but can move textures; off.
    Free ▲ Changes appearance
  2. 13
    Remove faces sitting exactly on another.
  3. 14
    Erase hidden faces and groups, never edges.
    Off by default Permanent
  4. 15
    Remove zero length edges.
  5. 16
    Remove stray edges.
    Free ▲ Changes appearance
  6. 17
    Move geometry onto one tag. You choose the tag.
    Free Off by default ▲ Changes appearance
  7. 18
    Soften and smooth shallow edges. SketchUp’s own Soften Edges controls: a 20° angle, smooth normals on, and soften coplanar faces too.
    Off by default ▲ Changes appearance

Heavy geometry

Lists objects over 10,000 faces, objects denser than their size explains, and objects whose faces are mostly too small to see, biggest first, each one ready to walk to. Nothing here changes the model.

A report, not a fix · Free

Tags

  1. 19
    Clear tags on geometry inside a tagged container.
  2. 20
    Promote a shared tag onto its container.
  3. 21
    Purge tags nothing uses.

Hierarchy

  1. 22
    Delete empty groups and instances.
  2. 23
    Collapse single child wrappers. Removes groups whose only job is to hold one other group.
  3. 24
    Hand a collapsed wrapper’s tag to its child.

Scale and axes

  1. 25
    Normalize scale into geometry. Builds a stretched or scaled object’s scale into its geometry and resets the object to 1.
  2. 26
    Fix axis flips and 90 degree swaps only.

Tolerance 0.5%.

Duplicate groups

  1. 27
    Merge identical groups into one component. Copies of the same group become instances of one component, so the file stores the geometry once. Two options, both off: require matching scale, and require matching container material. With both off, a size run of the same object becomes one component at several scales.

Styles

  1. 28
    Remove styles no scene points at.
    Permanent
  2. 29
    Merge styles with identical settings. A sub-fix of 28.

Over all of it: choose the whole model, the selection, or the current context. Repeat until settled keeps going until nothing changes, since one pass rarely finishes. Skip locked leaves locked containers exactly as they are.

Price

$149 at launch, one payment. No subscription.

License

Perpetual.
Every future update is included, 2.0 and beyond.

Machines

Use it on two machines at once, such as a desktop and a laptop.

Preflight

$149 at launch

Request beta access

Moving machines

Release a machine yourself, in the plugin or in your account, up to three times in any 30 days.

Offline

Work offline for up to 28 days before Preflight needs to check in.

If a license ends

Preflight drops back to the free version. It never stops opening your models.

Requirements

  • SketchUp 2021 or later, on Mac or Windows
  • No compiled parts, and nothing fetched at runtime
  • An internet connection to activate a license, then once every 28 days

FAQ

Will it change my model without asking?

No. The scan writes nothing, fixes run only when you check them, Preflight never saves on its own, and you can save a backup copy of your original file. Close without saving and your file is exactly as it was.

Does it reduce polygons?

No. It flags heavy objects, biggest first, so you can proxy them or simplify them with a tool like Skimp.

Is it really a one-time payment?

Yes. You pay $149 once and keep Preflight. Every future update is included, major versions too.

How many computers can I use it on?

Two at a time. If you replace a computer, release the old one from the plugin or from your account page, up to three times in any 30 days.

Can I try it first?

Preflight is in beta. Email contact@terminalagency.com to request access.

Who am I buying from?

Checkout is run by Paddle, our reseller and merchant of record. Paddle handles payment, sales tax and VAT, and invoices. The software is made by TERMINAL, a DBA of 20/20 Studio LLC.

Can I get a refund?

See our Refund Policy.

Do you offer team or studio licenses?

Contact us at contact@terminalagency.com and we’ll set up licenses for your team.

Where do I get help?

contact@terminalagency.com

Releases

Version, date, and notes list here from the Releases collection, newest first. The last five show, with “All releases” to expand.

Preflight is in beta

Want to try it on your own models? Email us and we’ll send you a copy.

Request beta access