March 23, 2019 · How-To

Install SketchUp Extensions for All Users

A model in SketchUp.

The Problem

Yesterday we were asked to find a way to install some specific SketchUp extensions for all users of some lab computers. At first, we could not locate an easy way to install them for all users of the given computer.

SketchUp's user forums noted it was storing extensions in:

C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp\SketchUp 2018\SketchUp\Plugins

But the documentation did not list a way to manually place the extension files in such a way as to install them for all users, not just the current user.

Obviously manually adding extensions for an entire lab via the Extension Manager was impractical, and using a logon script of some kind to copy the extensions to the AppData folder was not our preference.

The Solution

We located a post that indicated we could use the %ProgramData% folder to accomplish this.

  1. Create a Plugins folder inside %ProgramData%\SketchUp\SketchUp 2018\SketchUp\
  2. Place the extracted contents of your .rbz archives inside it. You can use 7-Zip to extract the contents of the .rbz archives.

Once the extracted contents are inside the Plugins folder you created, launch SketchUp. You'll now see your extensions listed in the Extension Manager!