I am a race director. I am advancing my field by using Sketchup to model elements of start areas, courses and finish areas in 3D then sharing those models in Google Earth using geolocate. I am currently modeling the BAA Boston Marathon finish line. I can create these models but the problem is sharing them due to the memory size of the models. I’ve used the Clean extension and other tricks like geolocation and exporting to KMZ to compress the models but the processing still bogs down on the receivers end. Most people’s computers lack fast processors, high end graphics cards, or both. When will the industry create a “PDF” version of the 3D models so they require less memory to process and are easier to manipulate in Google Earth? Or does this technology already exist?
3D PDFs do exist! I’ve never needed to use them myself, but I did download a 3D PDF of a part and opened it in Acrobat (NOT Acrobat Reader) and was able to look all around it.
A quick Google of “3D PDF” yields lots of results! Here’s one:
It purports to be able to manipulate 3D PDFs created from SketchUp Pro. Note this is NOT an endorsement, just an example! I haven’t tried it, nor will I until and unless I have a need!
I leave it to others to chime in with experience in generating 3D PDFs from SketchUp and what options might exist for - hopefully free - viewers.
for exporting 3D PDFs you can use the commercial SimLab 3D PDF exporter plugin (“Window > Extension Warehouse…”):
3D PDFs can be shown by the free Adobe Reader.
btw, keep in mind that you need a SketchUp Pro license if using commercially, i.e. making any income.
Thanks for the advice!
Be quick to grab those race track info from Google Earth as SketchUp support for it ends 22 May 2017 (to my knowledge).
followed by an other geo data provider, at least with recent SU(P) versions:
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