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The 3D viewer opens any model you publish to Speckle in your browser. Geometry starts appearing while the model is still downloading. Panels for Models, Filters, Views, Issues, Selection, and Elements dock around the canvas, and the toolbar holds Section, Sketch, and Measure.
The 3D viewer requires WebGPU. There is no fallback. Firefox on macOS currently allows eight GPU storage buffer bindings, and the viewer needs nine, so models do not open there — use Chrome, Edge, or Safari.

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Open a model

Open a project, then select a model. Large models use a hybrid load. A first overlay can show Preparing 3D stream or Downloading model. Once geometry starts painting, the overlay goes away and a progress stack in the top-right corner continues in the background. The downloaded copy is stored locally, so opening the same version again prefers that cache. You should see objects in the scene before the background download finishes. When you open an earlier version of a model, its card in Models shows Older version. Select that badge to load the latest version.
Point clouds do not render in the viewer yet. Everything else in the model loads normally, and your point cloud data is unchanged — the points are not drawn.
Some colours and materials do not render yet. Affected objects show as flat grey, even though the colour is in the published data. Known cases are coloured meshes and geometry with a Color input from Grasshopper, Civil 3D surfaces with materials, and models published before your project moved to the 2026.9 data format. Your data is unchanged, and connectors that load the model keep the colours.

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Find your way around

  • The top bar shows where you are (project, then model) and holds Share.
  • The left sidebar holds the workspace switcher and the Models, Filters, Views, and Issues tabs. Selection sits under those tabs and shows properties for the current pick.
  • Elements sits in the bottom dock and lists every object in the loaded models.
  • The toolbar at the bottom of the canvas holds fit, Section, Sketch, Measure, Save view, and Copy view link.
  • The status bar holds panel icons, undo, redo, fit, Screenshot, keyboard shortcuts, and Settings.
  • The navigation cube at the bottom-right of the canvas sets standard camera directions.
Panels are dockable: you can regroup, move, hide, and restore them. See Interface and navigation.

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What you can do

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Issues in the viewer

Issues lists issues for the models in the scene. Open it with Shift+I. Opening an issue that was created in this viewer restores the camera, filters, visibility, and selection stored with it. Right-click an issue card, or use ⋯, for Open issue page, which opens the full issue in a new tab. To tie an issue to particular objects, select them in the scene before you select New issue. The selection is stored with the issue, along with the camera, filters, and visibility at the moment you create it. An issue raised with nothing selected stores the view only. Fields, assignment, and permissions are on Issues.
Issues are available on every Speckle plan, on Speckle Cloud and on self-hosted servers.
An issue created in the viewer before 2026.9 can show Legacy issue — its view can’t be applied here yet. Its details still open.

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FAQ

Point clouds are not drawn in the viewer yet. Re-publishing or re-uploading the model will not change what you see, and connectors that load the point cloud keep working. Uploading an .e57 file is a separate case — see Direct uploads.
Some colours and materials are not drawn yet. Your data is unchanged. If the model was published before your project moved to the 2026.9 data format, publish it again from the source application to restore the colours. For Grasshopper colours and Civil 3D surface materials, publishing again does not help yet. If the colour stands for a property such as status or category, use Color by values on that property in Filters instead.
The viewer has no dedicated diff view. Ask Speckle Intelligence to compare two versions and summarise what changed — see Assess model changes with Speckle Intelligence.
The viewer cuts with individual section planes instead of a box — see Cut with section planes. View modes (Pen, Arctic, Shaded), explode, and lighting controls are not in this viewer. Projection and the grid are in the status bar Settings.
Embeds show the 3D scene only. The model tree, Filters, selection details, and the toolbar do not appear inside an embed on another site, whichever embed options you choose. Your model and its data are unchanged. Open the model in the web app to filter, select, or measure.
Firefox on macOS supports WebGPU, but it currently allows only eight GPU storage buffer bindings, the WebGPU specification minimum. The viewer needs nine, so the model will not open. Other browsers on macOS allow ten or more, and Windows and Android browsers generally allow sixteen or more. Until Firefox raises the limit, use Chrome, Edge, or Safari.
Last modified on October 19, 2026