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Vw2018 import and export sketchup


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I've been whinging about the trial and tribulations associated with exporting to SketchUp for years now, alas to no avail.  The philosophy held by many in the VW community is that SketchUp is really unnecessary given all that VW currently does.  I've always maintained however, that Sketchup is vastly more nimble at conceptualization and communicating design than VW. The learning curve is much less steep than VW.  Principals of firms like it, and can use it.  Making life easier between the two programs would only work to increase VW's market share. 

 

To get good exports, you need to download one plugin and and purchase one plugin for Sketchup. 

 

 

The trick is getting all the VW model triangulation to merge back together.  So... here goes...

  1. Export the model as a FBX.  The nice thing about this technique is that  the model textures will come through. 
  2. Import into Sketchup using the FBX import plugin for Sketchup.
  3. Then you will need to use the cleanup plugin to merge the triangulated faces.  I have attached a screenshot of the clean settings I use.  On complex models this may take a four or five minutes. 
  4. Once everything is merged, explode groups without exploding everything.  For reasons that are a mystery there are lots and lots of groups associated with a FBX export.
  5. The final cleanup task in SKP will involve selecting the edges (turn materials off) and making sure that none of them are soft or smooth.

I've exported models using this technique to the satisfaction of my baby boomer boss.  It takes about 15 minutes to get everything cleaned up and ready to use.  And materials/colors seem to export with this technique. 


Good Luck!

 

Sketchup Model geometry imported from VW has a lot of hidden geometry if you turn it on. 59bc145c17bfc_ScreenShot2017-09-15at1_55_50PM.png.f222f0068b33fe3991d3036e7778f2fc.png

Cleanup plugin settings: Sometimes I do this group by group that I selected. 

 

59bc146b1e3d8_ScreenShot2017-09-15at1_46_01PM.png.3f0c1e071d44fbb6a503e8214e3efdb5.png

 

When you want to push pull on shapes in Sketchup, make sure that soft and smooth edges are unchecked!  You will have to turn materials off and show outlines only.  Most of the time soft and smooth will be checked.  Uncheck these boxes.

 

59bc150dc74d7_ScreenShot2017-09-15at1_59_30PM.png.71c2e139eca0f713a8839ce8d7a11475.png

Edited by cberg
Better english (hopefully)
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25 minutes ago, cberg said:

Then you will need to use the cleanup plugin to merge the triangulated faces.

 

Funny is that the C4D Export does no unneeded triangulation.

(C4D could repair triangulation fine. Modo not, but needs FBX)

FBX unfortunately does triangulate.

 

But I think if you export FBX "by Class" there is no unecessary grouping.

But you loose you Layer sorting that way, as long as you do not export Layer by Layer separately.

 

That Clean Up Plugin is cool.

Edited by zoomer
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1 hour ago, zoomer said:

No, I googled a bit, it is said that C4D (R17) has  Sketchup import+export.

Didn't find it in settings or where it is in R18.

 

 

SKETCHUP

 

 

Had not time to watch it so far ....

Maybe I miscommunicated. I was wondering what you thought the best way would be to get from VWX to Sketchup.

Edited by cberg
Typos etc.
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Yes, I saw your post after I posted.

So far I only did a few times the other way, SKP to VW.

And I am a great FBX fan in 3D so I would try that first.

But years ago with Modo it was always by DAE.

 

But if you have that import plugin and it works well, that may be better than DAE.

(I have a Simlab DWG to Modo that works well, geometry wise)

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Sketchup is easy to use, but one needs to figure out a few things first before it starts to make sense and you get the hang of it. That being said, I started doing 3D in CAD and often require exact positioning, both on location and relative to each other, and that is where the 3D programs like Sketchup to be too cumbersome to use compared to Vectorworks. It is almost like trying to squeeze ketchup :)
Of course it all depends on your needs.

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  • 1 month later...

I like the Sketchup to Vectorworks export to get some quickly rendered OpenGL scenes (they look much nicer when rendered in Vectorworks) but I can't get the Sketchup faceme symbols to work after I import them into Vectorworks.

Is there a workflow besides replacing the imported symbol with a Vectorworks image object?

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  • 2 years later...
  • 2 months later...
On 9/15/2017 at 2:03 PM, cberg said:

I've been whinging about the trial and tribulations associated with exporting to SketchUp for years now, alas to no avail.  The philosophy held by many in the VW community is that SketchUp is really unnecessary given all that VW currently does.  I've always maintained however, that Sketchup is vastly more nimble at conceptualization and communicating design than VW. The learning curve is much less steep than VW.  Principals of firms like it, and can use it.  Making life easier between the two programs would only work to increase VW's market share. 

 

To get good exports, you need to download one plugin and and purchase one plugin for Sketchup. 

 

 

The trick is getting all the VW model triangulation to merge back together.  So... here goes...

  1. Export the model as a FBX.  The nice thing about this technique is that  the model textures will come through. 
  2. Import into Sketchup using the FBX import plugin for Sketchup.
  3. Then you will need to use the cleanup plugin to merge the triangulated faces.  I have attached a screenshot of the clean settings I use.  On complex models this may take a four or five minutes. 
  4. Once everything is merged, explode groups without exploding everything.  For reasons that are a mystery there are lots and lots of groups associated with a FBX export.
  5. The final cleanup task in SKP will involve selecting the edges (turn materials off) and making sure that none of them are soft or smooth.

I've exported models using this technique to the satisfaction of my baby boomer boss.  It takes about 15 minutes to get everything cleaned up and ready to use.  And materials/colors seem to export with this technique. 


Good Luck!

 

Sketchup Model geometry imported from VW has a lot of hidden geometry if you turn it on. 59bc145c17bfc_ScreenShot2017-09-15at1_55_50PM.png.f222f0068b33fe3991d3036e7778f2fc.png

Cleanup plugin settings: Sometimes I do this group by group that I selected. 

 

59bc146b1e3d8_ScreenShot2017-09-15at1_46_01PM.png.3f0c1e071d44fbb6a503e8214e3efdb5.png

 

When you want to push pull on shapes in Sketchup, make sure that soft and smooth edges are unchecked!  You will have to turn materials off and show outlines only.  Most of the time soft and smooth will be checked.  Uncheck these boxes.

 

59bc150dc74d7_ScreenShot2017-09-15at1_59_30PM.png.71c2e139eca0f713a8839ce8d7a11475.png

Does this work in Reverse??? I find export 3ds to Sketchup from VW works quite well, but importing SU into VW is a nightmare of meshes??? Is there a way to merge meshes in VW? 

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42 minutes ago, archdaly said:

Does this work in Reverse??? I find export 3ds to Sketchup from VW works quite well, but importing SU into VW is a nightmare of meshes??? Is there a way to merge meshes in VW? 

Not directly in a simple straightforward way as it depends on the mesh complexity and quality etc., you could select a mesh and then try the simplify mesh command.

 

If you do have access to Rhino then importing into Rhino first, if necessary fix some things in Rhino, and then import the Rhino file into VW may give you good enough results to continue with as it often reduces mesh/triangulation complexity.

It has worked for me several times in the past when importing 3D geometry that were triangulations and meshes from AutoCAD and the DWG-based likes.

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1 hour ago, Art V said:

Not directly in a simple straightforward way as it depends on the mesh complexity and quality etc., you could select a mesh and then try the simplify mesh command.

 

If you do have access to Rhino then importing into Rhino first, if necessary fix some things in Rhino, and then import the Rhino file into VW may give you good enough results to continue with as it often reduces mesh/triangulation complexity.

It has worked for me several times in the past when importing 3D geometry that were triangulations and meshes from AutoCAD and the DWG-based likes.

Thank you! I'll try the Rhino work around. Simplify mesh never seems to really do much to be that helpful!

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  • 4 months later...

I've been working to import a VW 2020 model into Sketchup Pro 2021 and found the SimLab FBX Importer to work smoothly, though I now have a complex SU model with nested groups and components. The walls and floor slabs are split by story, but there's no Vectorworks rendering to mask the transitions. Since each wall is a series of nested groups and components, it is challenging to clean this up. Any advice/insight? I've started a tread here: 

 

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  • 7 months later...

I'm going to withdraw my recommendation for FBX Importer and SimLab! I bought the plugin in February and used it then without incident. Recently, I wanted to use it again. I opened SketchUp, ungraded as requested, tried to use the plugin and was told it needed to be registered. I couldn't make that work and have spent the better part of two weeks going back and forth with customer service, being accused of installing it on multiple machines and being told to do the same failed registration steps over and over again. They told me I had "one last chance." It didn't work and they've stopped answering my emails. I found a similar plugin from "skimp" (https://skimp4sketchup.com) that seems to be working fine so far...

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