DAE importing wrong scale

Technical Problems SketchUp
1

I’m using meshlab to save my furniture model from Solidworks as a collada file before importing into sketchup. Im using collada as its importing more cleanly than when i export/import DWG/DXF.

However when i import the DAE into sketchup the scale is hugely blown up - something like x10. There doesn’t seem to be any options on import scale in sketchup or when exporting in meshlab.

Has anyone come across this when importing and aware of how to combat this, scaling in sketchup is not ideal.

Thanks,

2

Make sure you read through our Help article that explains best practices on important and exportin .dae files.

Thanks,
AlexB

3

I’m experiencing the same problem. If I open a .dae file in Sketchup, then its many times larger than it should be. I’d guess that its about 100+ times larger than it should be. Is there any workaround for this problem? Am I doing something wrong? I have read the above links. They don’t help much.

4

1434×626 18.5 KB

This is an example of the problem.

5

This sounds like an issue with the units defined in the .dae file. Could you share it here so we can take a look?

6

I’ve attached both the DAE and the original STL file in a .zip for you to compare.

rpi2-bottom.zip (2.3 MB)

Regards,

R

7

Your DAE has these lines:

<unit name="meter" meter="1" /> <up_axis>Y_UP</up_axis>

One made from a SketchUp model has these equivalent:

<unit meter="0.0254" name="inch" /> <up_axis>Z_UP</up_axis>

So you can see there are some potential issues…
So perhaps you need to scale the resultant imported form by an appropriate factor AND rotate its axis…

8

The problem is that MeshLab exports what appears to be a vanilla COLLADA file. Sketchup uses their own version which adds information such as for materials. As was stated by TIG the Sketchup DAE file has that line … < unit meter="0.0254" name="inch" /> which is not in the MeshLab DAE file. Without this Sketchup goes nuts with the sizing as it has no instructions.

I exported a 1 inch cube as a DAE … brought it into MeshLab … conveted to STL and saved as STL. Reloaded the STL and then exported back to DAE. I then imported that MeshLab DAE into Sketchup. The cube NOW measured 39.370 on a side (some rounding going on here by the way)

That is when I saw the missing ‘conversion code’. If you rework that formula a bit for millimeters you get <unit millimeter="2.54" name="inch" /> … which in a roundabout way let me to - 1000/25.4 = 39.371 (and change). which is the number of inches in a meter.

Sooo. Take the crazy dimension you get on a MeshLab DAE after importing into Sketchup and divide by that 39.370 (applied the rounding) to convert back correctly.