KetchUp is a free SketchUp alternative in Rust and WebGPU

SketchUp is the 3D tool many woodworkers, hobbyists and small studios use, and it costs money. A new project does the same job in a free, open-source app.

KetchUp3D is a small 3D edge and face editor written in Rust. The repository, Ketchup3D/app on GitHub, is MIT licensed and had 52 stars on 8 November 2026. The project page at ketchup3d.github.io/app describes it as a free, open-source SketchUp alternative. A Show HN post for it reached 78 points and 10 comments in under two hours on the same day.

What it does

The README lists the drawing and editing tools. A user can draw lines, rectangles, circles, polygons and freehand paths. They can then push, pull, scale, offset, move and rotate the faces. There are paint, tape measure, protractor and dimension tools. The app snaps geometry on its own and fills planar faces. Groups and components are supported. Native project files use the .k3d extension. A legacy .ketchup format is kept for older saves.

The feature that turns this from a toy into something usable on old work is on the file menu. The README says File then Import or Export adds a SketchUp .skp reader. Export is to Wavefront .obj. A user with a folder of SketchUp models from a paid licence can open them here without a subscription.

How it runs

KetchUp3D has two builds. The native build runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. The browser build runs through WebAssembly. Its rendering stack picks WebGPU when the browser supports it, and falls back to WebGL2. The README says the GPU layer uses wgpu. Rust 1.95 or newer is needed to build the project from source. The native SketchUp reader also asks for a C or C++17 compiler. The browser build does not need it.

The repository was created on 23 October 2026. It had 167 commits and 2 forks by 8 November. The license is MIT. A studio can fork it, change it, and sell it in a paid product.

Where it still falls short

The Hacker News discussion names the gaps. Several commenters say the prompt that asks for a name after drawing an object is in the way. They also say the push and pull tool does not match the behaviour SketchUp users expect. A commenter asks whether the name is close enough to the SketchUp trademark to be a problem. Nobody reports a crash.

Push and pull is the move most SketchUp users reach for first. A mismatch there is the costliest of the three gaps. The benefit on the other side is that the tool runs in the browser with no account and no download. A visitor can open the app page, draw a rectangle and pull it into a box in one minute. The paid SketchUp free tier has let people do that for years. Now a tool that opens the files from the paid desktop version also does.

For a studio that already pays for SketchUp Pro, nothing moves yet. A hobbyist who stopped at the free web version is in a different place. If they have old .skp files on disk, the choice today is new.

Source

Ketchup3D/app on GitHub, the project page and the Hacker News discussion.