Turbo Mode

One-click relief for heavy SketchUp models

Turbo Mode switches to a lighter working view when a model becomes slow—or before you start a demanding operation.

In one click it turns off textures, transparency, shadows, and other display effects that can make SketchUp work harder. Structural edges stay on. Your geometry, materials, tags, and saved scenes stay untouched.

Before using Turbo Mode, make sure you have a saved scene whose display settings you are happy to return to. Any suitable existing scene works. If the current view has important settings that are not saved in another scene, create a new scene to preserve them first.

Download WRA Turbo 1.0.0

Free for SketchUp 2026. Extension Warehouse review is pending.

Turbo Mode workflow: prepare a recovery scene, apply the one-way viewport override, then activate the saved scene when you want its display settings back

Hide your heaviest model content in the same click

Put heavy-component tags inside an optional !Performance folder. Turbo Mode switches every matching folder off when applied; restore them with your recovery scene when you are ready.

This is the largest performance gain Turbo Mode can offer and requires a short, one-time setup for each model. The Turbo Mode Guide explains how to set up the folder without changing member tags or moving objects between tags.

One-way by design

Turbo Mode is an override, not a toggle. It retains no snapshot, and applying it again is safe but does not restore the earlier view.

Activate your chosen recovery scene to restore the display settings it saved. Without a suitable scene, you must restore those settings manually. The guide explains which properties a scene needs to store and why Undo applies only to !Performance folders.

Turbo Mode aborts and reports failures clearly. It runs only when you invoke it: no telemetry, no network calls, and no background observers.

See Turbo Mode in a working model

The demonstration starts with a working architecture model carrying full textures, shadows, ambient occlusion, and detailed manufacturer components. It prepares a recovery scene, applies Turbo Mode, uses an optional !Performance folder for the heaviest tags, then activates the scene to restore the saved display state.

Your browser does not support HTML video. The demonstration is described in the transcript below.

Heavy model, low-overhead view, recovery

A detailed SketchUp house model with textures, shadows, ambient occlusion, and the optional Performance tag folder visible
Before: the full working display.
The same SketchUp kitchen after Turbo Mode removes expensive display effects and switches off the optional Performance folder
Turbo Mode: predictable low-overhead display.
The SketchUp kitchen after its recovery scene restores saved display settings and detailed appliances
Recovery: activate the scene to restore its saved state.
Read the video transcript

This is a working model. Full textures, shadows, ambient occlusion, and the appliances heavy, just like their manufacturers modeled them. This is what that feels like.

Before we fix that, one habit worth keeping: save a scene. Turbo Mode is deliberately one-way, and a saved scene is how your display settings come back.

One click and Turbo Mode gets rid of textures, shadows, fog, ambient occlusion, sky, watermarks, all the things that cost display performance and carry information we don’t need for working on the model. The status bar confirms it quietly. Same model. Now it moves.

We run this daily, even on clean models. It gives us predictable performance; when something really heavy does land, it’s the release valve. It’s the abort mission, but without full ejection.

The heaviest tags, manufacturer models, Warehouse furniture, anything with curves and highly detailed bevels, et cetera, these are all grouped in their own folder, and the convention is in the name. So you call it exactly !Performance.

Apply Turbo Mode again, and the whole folder switches off in the same click together with the visual settings. Done with your heavy lifting? Activate your recovery scene. Display settings and the folder come straight back. Display settings of the tags you put in the folder, they stay the way they were before they went in.

SketchUp’s own workflow. Nothing proprietary stored in your file.

WRA Turbo, built inside a working architecture practice. Free forever. No telemetry. wraturbo.com

Release status

WRA Turbo 1.0.0 is the stable first public release. It contains Turbo Mode and is built for and tested on SketchUp 2026. Support for earlier versions will follow user demand and field reports.

WRA Turbo 1.0.0 was submitted to Extension Warehouse on 13 August 2026 and is awaiting Trimble review. Until it is available there, this website provides the official WRA download.

To install it:

  1. Download WRA Turbo 1.0.0.
  2. In SketchUp, open Extensions > Extension Manager and choose Install Extension.
  3. Select WRA_Turbo_v1.0.0.rbz, then dock the WRA Turbo toolbar wherever you like.

Obtain WRA Turbo and its updates only from wraturbo.com or Extension Warehouse. The WRA Turbo License does not permit redistribution.

Verify download
  • Filename: WRA_Turbo_v1.0.0.rbz
  • Size: 62,965 bytes
  • SHA-256: 5b98171a707d862c618c442bd4c8863a678e7bd1493743a92b60047290e33f73
  • Checksum file

WRA Turbo is an always-free suite. Turbo Mode is its first tool; substantial future tools will be named clearly before you choose to download and install a release. WRA Turbo Pro is a separate, complementary suite.

Go straight to the Turbo Mode Guide.

Questions and field reports are welcome through the contact page or at feedback@wraturbo.com.