Run Google SketchUp on Ubuntu

Google's SketchUp is a 3D-modelling program designed for ease of use. It has many great features. There is only one problem. It is not available on Linux. A workaround is to run SketchUp under Wine. This blog post describes how to install SketchUp on Ubuntu with Wine.

To start with, install Wine and winetricks.

Next, use wintricks to install some needed libraries:

winetricks corefonts vcrun6 vcrun2005

Now, download and install the Windows version of Google SketchUp:

wget http://dl.google.com/sketchup/GoogleSketchUpWEN.exe
wine GoogleSketchUpWEN.exe

You should now be able to start Google SketchUp:

wine C:\\Program\\Google\\Google\ SketchUp\ 8\\SketchUp.exe

If it doesn't start or crash after a few seconds, you must make a change in Windows Registry. Start the registry editor:

wine regedit

Browse the registry's to locate following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Google/SketchUp7/GLConfig/Display

Change the value of HW_OK as follows:

HW_Ok = 1

Now, you can start Google SketchUp and it should work. See also Wine Application Database for future workarounds.