Best way to control linetype, line thickness and color?

Gotta love it when the customer says “I want this” and the seller says “no you don’t!”.
In my 14 years of using SketchUp, I’ve developed some workflows for getting from the 3D model to the printed page (or PDF file). Long story short, you need a second program that can translate color to line weight. You export from Sketchup, usually via DWG or DXF format, import to your second program, then select lines by color and set their line weight, output color, &/or dash pattern. You may also find that text does not come out the way you wanted it to, so some tweaking needed there too.
I have high hopes that Layout will do all this for me some day. My drawings are way too complex for Layout to handle, so I use a basic 2D CAD program instead. To reduce the amount of tweaking, I wrote the FlatText and DPLineStyler plugins. I am now working on a line weight solution using Postscript/PDF; I hope to have something ready soon.
I do not think it’s realistic to have one program that “does it all.” Any successful workflow I’ve developed has used multiple apps. The trick is to find apps that play together well and won’t break the bank.
Good luck!

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