All edges in model are smooth and duplicated - clean needed

Hi all!

I have imported large model from Revit - actually exported it from Revit as SKP using Simlab exporter.

Model looks really fine in SU (no missing faces, textures in place etc.) but - every single group and component has all of its edges: smooth/softened and duplicated. Each face has got its own boundary edges. There are literally 2 edges on every edge (on top of each other).

CleanUp3 can’t deal with it as it only deletes duplicate faces and not duplicate edges.

Only solution I’ve found so fsr is to get down to raw geometry of each group / component, unsmooth all edges, then group raw geometry and explode it - this causes duplicate edges to merge/glue and as this model is otherwise very clean - this produces solid group/component in 99 percent of cases.

Please help - as i need to make such modification to every single group and component in model (4 levels of nested objects) and literally thousands of groups/components.

Even getting to inside all groups/components would be tiresome, no to mention above modifications.

Is there a tool that would go through all groups/components and unsmooth all edges? This is vital as when you group and explode unsmoothed geometry, you end up with smooth object, and you have to unsmooth it otherwise (model is very angular - i don’t mind smoothing all curves afterwards by hand). Of course a tool that can add specific smoothing angle value (slider) would be most welcome.

Is there a tool that can go through all model and weld/glue all duplicated edges?

I have spent full day on forums and found nothing.

Thank You all for a method of automating this chore.

What version of SketchUp are you using? Your profile lists a version that has never existed. Knowing the real version you are using would help us give you some guidance.

SU 2020 Pro.
To make things clear - using Simlab SKP exporter.i the first place is necessars as this model is not importable using SU tools (i.e. IFC import hangs).

SU file produced by Simlab has 450 Mb - but I’m sure that with some optimization I can get below 100Mb. But I have to go through welding those duplicated edges.

Maybe CleanUp3 would help. It can go through the entire model. It might taks some time so I would get it started and go do something else.

Please correct your profile.

Profile corrected.

I use CleanUp3 all the time. After cleanup all triangulated coplanar faces got edges removed - this took 47 minutes and left me with very good model of 290 MB ( 150mb less that raw import).

But as I wrote in the beginning - CleanUp3 doesn’t weld duplicated edges. It can deal with duplicate faces (there are non in model), it can deal with stray edges and repair split edges but it doesn’t deal with having 2 edges on to of each other. Normally this is not possible to make in raw SketchUp as those edges would instantly glue to each other. But this model has every single face with boundary edges separated. I can grab each edge and by moving it I affect only one face (and not 2 faces sharing single edge).

As i stated - grouping geometry and exploding it forces sketchup to weld those edges - and I’m fine with that. But you have to manually go into every single group… this will take me days…

I need some automatization at least…

Try Eneroth Auto Weld. It’ll weld all the weldable edges. It does require that you open the components, groups first but I don’t know of another one, though.

Thank You - I will give it a try. Maybe its good at getting rid of duplicate edges… But a solution (as I imagine) would be a script that goes into every single group/component and cycling through make group/explode group routine.

Sketchup internal engine makes perfect sense - but the sheer number of such operations is frightening…

P.S. i might have produced misunderstanding with using word - ‘weld’ - welding in sketchup means more of making curves of series of edges - and I meant glueing duplicate edges.

If your time is worth money, you might find it worthwhile asking in the Commercial and Collaborative Work category if someone could write you a plugin to do this for you automatically.

For an experienced SketchUp Ruby coder, it might not take very long or cost a great deal.

Ok. I will have a look there.

Have you told SimLab about this? To me it sounds like something they ought to fix.

I’m about to do that. I investigated some more, and apparently SimLab produces unresonable object hierarchy, with:

  1. groups of Revit cetegories - that is good
  2. groups of Revit object types - that is also good
  3. 2 or 3 levels of unnecesary grouping nested - that I don’t know a purpose of and… wait for it
  4. 2 components - on containing all object edges, and other one having only faces with all edges softened so they are not visible…

After CleanUp - stray edges are removed (with my setting) and this erases all “stray” edges in edge components, so I’m left with only face geometry. Faces are not connected - one has to group them and explode to glue them by sketchup engine.

It seems that SimLabs object hierarchy is severly flawed, and producing way overblown geometries than actually needed… I will get to them, and ask about this flaw.

That sounds to me like the SimLabs exporter was developed by someone with no real knowledge of correct SketchUp model structure, who tried to force SimLabs structure onto SketchUp.

I don’t know if anyone got the answer yet. I will share what I know how to unsmooth the model that export from Simlab
.
I use SketchUp 2021 pro, After use CleanUp, I use JHS Powerbar Extension to unsmooth all edge.

  1. Install Extension
  2. Select Model
  3. Click the first tools (AMS Smooth Dialog)
  4. Slide to 0
  5. Untick Smooth Normals and soften Coplanar

I will generate automatic if not just click update. It will froze a bit depending on complexity of the model.