Collaborating within a Model

SketchUp Viewer’scollaboration features enable groups of users to experience SketchUp projects with immersive virtual and augmented reality devices. Group members can join collaboration sessions via a local Wi-Fi network or join remotely via the internet.

When you’re collaborating in a room, the owner of the room is the presenter, and everyone else joins as an attendee. Everyone in the room has an avatar that represents who and where they are in the virtual project model, relative to each other.

The following sections explain all the ins and outs of collaborating with others.

Table of Contents
  1. Choosing Your Avatar and User-name
  2. Setting up a Collaboration Room
  3. Joining a Room
  4. Presenting in a Collaboration Room
  5. Attending a Collaboration Session
  6. Leaving a Collaboration Room
Attention: If you are seeing connection errors when trying to initiate a collaboration session, check to make sure your device is online and that you are able to load web pages via a browser. If everything seems to be working as expected, check to ensure that your network and router is not blocking UDP ports 5055, 5056, 5058, and update the firewall rules. See your router manual on how to change this setting. Some technical knowledge is required.

Choosing Your Avatar and Username

Before you create or join a room, you can edit how you’ll appear so that other members know who you are. To edit your avatar and username, follow these steps:

  1. Click the Collaboration icon (). You can find this icon on the Main Menu, the Home Screen, and the Model Viewer toolbar. After you click Collaboration, you can use the My Room area to define your collaborative workspace, as shown in the following figure.
  2. To change your username, click in the Username field and enter a new name with the keyboard that appears.
  3. To change your avatar, click the image next to the Username field to cycle through the available avatars. When you find one you like, leave it as your selected avatar.

Setting up a Collaboration Room

To collaborate with others, you start by creating a room. The person who creates the room is the presenter. To create a collaboration room, follow these steps:

  1. Click the Collaboration icon (). You can find this icon on the Main Menu, the Home Screen, and the Model Viewer toolbar. After you click Collaboration, you use the My Room area to define your collaborative workspace.
  2. In the Room Security area, choose what type of room you want to create:
    • Public: Anyone running SketchUp Viewer can see and join your room.
    • Restricted: Other SketchUp Viewer users can see your room in a list, but need a PIN to join.
    • Private: Your room isn’t publicly listed, and users can join only with your PIN.
      Note: When creating a restricted or private room, be sure to take note of the PIN that is generated for your room. You will need to share the PIN with any other attendees who you want to join your session.
  3. Click the Start Session button at the top.

Joining a Room

To join an existing room, follow these steps:

  1. Click the Collaboration icon (). You can find this icon on the Main Menu, the Home Screen, and the Model Viewer toolbar.
  2. In the area on the left, click Public or Private to indicate what type of room you want to join.
  3. Do one of the following:
    • If you chose Public, all public rooms will be displayed, and you can select the room that you wish to join.
    • If you chose Private, as shown in the following figure, you will be asked to enter the PIN of the room that you wish to join. Use the on-screen number pad to enter the PIN of the room.
  4. Click the Join button.

Presenting in a Collaboration Room

When you’re the presenter of a collaborative session, you have options that enable you to organize your session. You find these options on the Home Screen’s Collaboration tab, as shown in the following figure, or the Model Viewer toolbar in Tabletop or Immersive mode.


The following list explains the options and how they work:

  • To mute an attendee, click the Microphone icon () next to the attendee’s name.
  • To eject an attendee, click the X icon next to the attendee’s name.
  • To mute or unmute yourself, click your Microphone icon (at the top, next to My Room).
  • Your gaze appears as a laser from the top of your avatar, and can be used to call other attendees attention to where you’re looking in the model. Toggling off your gaze turns off this effect. To toggle your gaze on or off, click the Gaze icon ().
  • To close the session, click the End icon ().

Attending a Collaboration Session

When attending a collaborative session, many of the SketchUp Viewer features will be disabled and you will, for the most part, be “tethered” to the presenter.

To take over the presentation, click the Request Presentation icon (). The current presenter receives your message requesting to change you to the presenter. The current presenter can accept (and promote you to presenter) or deny the request.

The following options are made available to collaborators during a multi-user session, via the Model Viewer toolbar:

  • To see details about an entity in the model, click the Entity Information icon () and then click an entity in the model. On the Information tab, you can toggle between viewing Entity Information and Entity Hierarchy.
  • To take a measurement, click the Tape Measure icon (). See Measuring Dimensions for details.
  • To adjust your collaboration settings, click the Collaboration icon (). See Choosing Your Avatar and User-name earlier in this article for details about the settings you can adjust.

Leaving a Collaboration Room

You can leave a collaboration room anytime:

  • If you’re the presenter: click the End icon () to close the room and end the session for all attendees.
  • If you’re an attendee: click the End icon, to leave the room.

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