I have a 3D model that I work on daily for about a week, but unfortunately, lately, when I try to open the file, I keep getting this message: ‘This is not a SketchUp model.’ How can I fix this, please?
Hi ai, could you share your model with us?
any updates ?
The files you shared are both totally empty, containing only zeros. There is nothing to recover inside. This seems to happen most often when saving directly to the cloud or to a cloud-synced folder. Where were you saving?
no way to restore ?
No way. If you haven’t got an earlier working copy of the file, you must start over.
Your profile says you have a Pro subscription for SketchUp. When you start over on your project ensure you are saving it to your internal drive and not directly to the cloud. Also take advantage of your Trimble Connect storage and save a backup copy there periodically.
I’ve encountered the same issue with a file (12MB) I was working in 15 hours ago - now giving me the same message as this! Saved on my local drive, the SKB of the same file, timestamped 9 minutes earlier is also failing to open.
My SU workspace has also reset to default when I opened today - not sure if related.
There was a SU update available, which I’ve installed in case of bug fixes, but no luck. I tried to upload the offending file to Trimble Connect, but failed to convert.
I had updated the reference in the related layout file, so have a plan version of the layout I had been working on at least, so can reload a DWG back into SU to save some reworking, but still a bit of a pain in the butt!
Happy to share files if this would be of use - what’s the preferred sharing platform?
FYI, .layout files are really zip archives. You can open the file with WinZip or 7-Zip (etc.) and extract a copy of the .skp model. It may be in a subfolder within the archive.
EDIT: You can also just make a copy of the .layout file and rename the copy to .zip extension. Then right-click it and Open With > Windows Explorer.
Thank you Learned One, my file is retrieved!
Mind blown 
- I’d never had reason to think about Layout in this way before, but total makes sense now. New found respect for the oft-maligned Layout!
The most challenging step was finding the option to display the file name extension so I could change it successfully.
Thanks again!
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Only if you can share it with us.
Neither file is a SketchUp model file. They are mostly filled with zeroes and don’t even have the SketchUp file header. There’s nothing to recover from either file.
Where were you saving the file while working on it?
Your profile says you have a Classic license for SketchUp 2024. Does that mean it’s a cr acked version?
Maybe. I have downloaded the latest version but still cannot open teh files.
Maybe what?
The files are corrupted and cannot be recovered with any version of SketchUp.