The tool we need is for sections in sketchup to actually be/represent the exported dwg, with groups, layers, text, measurements, axis reference lines. Then we can update a dwg library without the hassle. Scalp seems to want to do that, as they talk about one-click export of all their scalp sections within sketchup. But I don’t think they understand the needs out there, for production reference drawings, as they focus graphically on CAD fills and the graphical looks of a over-drawn nice looking dwg-file. No outside engineer or designer appreciate that. Outside consultants need the drawing to tell the what and where’s of the design, and to quickly reorganize that drawing as their own underlay. That is what Layout could have been, I guess, if they were not dead focused on the smaller projects of one man in the kitchen offices who didn’t learn AutoCAD, Word, Indesign or any other tool. What a waste of energy making the Layout app has been…
I’d pay good money for a SU DWG exporter that actually works. Also, while SU DWG importer asks to maintain drawing origin, it doesn’t… just another small but troublesome issue.
Being able to communicate with others in a standard professional manner is critical.
It does. However, if the DWG has a modified UCS, that won’t be respected, or, if your axis in SketchUp is modified. When you check the “Preserve drawing origin” in the import options, the world origin of the DWG is placed at the origin of the SketchUp model.
I frequently export DWG’s, let say plans, to re-import into sketchup as so I have a 2D base to work upon. Every re-import requires repositioning. I have learned to add the origin into the SU model as 3 lines so I have an alignment reference. I’ve never gotten SU to respect origin. I must being doing something wrong.
Interesting to think about this: Layout was first introduced to communicate the sketchup model to the outside world. And then suddenly Sketchup was in the page layout business instead of making a support tool to effectively communicate the sketchup model geometry. That´s just really monumentally weird.
But if you could export a page from Layout to a fully working 2D dwg file complete with paper space elements, plot style tables and the lot, then there would even be a business case for offering Layout as a standalone app.
It is your exporting, not importing, that is the problem. What the 2D DWG exporter does is to create a vector screenshot of your SketchUp view. The origin is a 3D point in space so it is somewhat irrelevant to that (imagine an elevation or perspective or oblique view). Using an origin marker is a good workaround.
Yes. Communication with contractors, building permit authorities and clients is nowadays most often done using PDF files. Communication with HVAC consultants, structural engineers etc. uses IFC files.
My goodness, why should SketchUp replicate a CAD application from the early 1980s? I last saw a pen plotter something like 27 years ago!
Just go and export. That is what the LayOut exporter does.
No it does not. It does not export the layers and components of the underlying sketchup model. Exporting proper dwg´s is what this thread is about 
The pot style table ( in AutoCAD) is not about plotters. Its about standardizing the relationship between layers and line thickness and color.
And no: ifc is good for many occasions, but dwg is still, and will be, the easy way for a group of many professions with different skill levels and skillsets to get a grip of the project.
Expoting the 3D model does. I understand the quest for it in 2D output, but it is a legacy workflow.
It was that for old versions of AutoCad. It is still supported for legacy reasons, but today there is a lineweight setting. Again, who do you need it for? When I send DWG files to the old fashioned part of consultants that I work with, the first thing they do with it is to make all my layers grey. DWG files are never sent out to be printed.
Some like to control manually the lineweight of every line, but the “legacy” effective way is to state that all geometry of a layer prints the same. (on the pdf)
And pdf is still 2D, as is the paper that lay about on the construction site. Carpenters don’t walk about with an iPad in their pocket, and don’t sketch their own comments and changes to the drawing onto the iPad, and don’t translate with own remarks to the other workers that does not speak the language, onto the iPad. They use paper and pen. Productive meetings still use paper with a pencil in everyone’s hand. Collaboration on a more advanced level requires everybody to know the same software, even the broker, and the customer, and that is just never ever gonna happen, not even in the post Covid-19 world.
I have seen that. Not sure if it was an Android tablet instead, but…
Yes, PDF is 2D, and it has lineweights and colours.
AutoCad as a design tool is dead, at least here in Finland. Our clients insist on BIM application use. I have about 35 years of AutoCad experience as the office “CAD guy” but for years I have used it mainly to view files and strip out unnecessary data from files to be used as underlays in BIM.
Sure AutoCAD is kind of dead. I still use it, mostly because I hate the other modelers more. People sit and click maybe once a minute to try to draw stuff in their advanced BIM modelers, cursing, while I quietly knit away.
But that is not my point. We need some base exchange format, to other consultants, and to paper/pdf. And ifc works in some situations/ groups and not others. Sketchup has responded kind of strangely to this since day one, thinking maybe, that the future would make these interchange formats obsolete. But it didn’t happen and people ask for dwg´s still, as they have done for almost 20 years.
Those dwg´s were uncool in 2001 as well, but needed, as they are now. More man-hours have probably been spent cleaning up sketchup exports than developing the app itself, and that is wrong.
Amen! Well said.
Just want to state that I said something incorrect about the plott style table thing. Obviously you don’t need that in a dwg exporter. You just need to state the layer colors, and/or lineweiights (with also AutoCAD index colors preferably).
Also, for basic proper export, we do NOT need to be able to save to the latest versions. Any old format will do, as the features we need compatibility with has been around since the last millennium. You don’t need AutoCADs agreement for that. Opendwg Alliance has documentet resources for at least until AutoCAD 2009. So don’t waste energy with AutoCAD 2020 compatibility, that will only be a work for nothing.
I too think that whatever DWG format SketchUp exports to is of no great importance. However, I think that Import compatibility with the latest version is what counts. #1 or #2 DWG import issue in these forums is, especially on a year when Autodesk introduces its new unnecessary DWG format, is with the OP to have received a file that SU cannot import for these reasons.
I understand that SU uses a third party library for these imports and exports so upgrading that to an up to date version is no big drain in development resources.
yes. for import its important. For export, not so much, I think, because any app can handle that the dwg is of an old version, even handle it better maybe. But if its no hassle making exports in new versions, then even better.
I think what scalp can do, is maybe enough for the very basic underlay, and as you said, many old school consultants just grey out these drawings, after turning off the layers that confuse them. But Sketchup is no BIM, and its users love it for its simplicity. BIM is not nessecarlity simple and efficient. So the combination of having Sketchup work with other basic 2D software is very good also for the sketchup worker. Then one can make simple scematics of windows and doors on a workable dwg, or just migrate the project into dwg for all production fase drawings. Sketchup is after all an alternative to BIM for many, and a simpler one, if the workflow between simple 3D and simple 2D worked. Which it does not…
With scalp you would get a floorplan with no components for the doors and windows, just basic lines, and no origin. Thats just …
So if I understand correctly; when doing 2d exports from SketchUp or Layout, the origin will/can be different every time for every view, floorplan, section, elevation etc? There’s no way around that so it always preserves the real world origin?
Edit: This behavior explains the message a contractor just send me… he’s running into issues using the dwg files in his laser device for outlining the building…
Edit2:any chance when using SketchUp in mm-mode it can store the coordinates ‘under the hood’ in mm’s instead of inches? The same contractor reported ‘weird’ units for lines so 3175mm would turn into 3174.46mm. Not that he will even built using that accuracy …
Amazing. Original post was in 2015. We’ve heard about how obsolete 2D cad is and yet we’re all still begging for some decent dwg export from sketchup and layout. I don’t expect any response from trimble after all these years. Hell, SU doesn’t even have “layers” anymore so I guess the problem is solved.
DWG format is not obsolete. There is a huge world working outside of Finland @Anssi .
Rest assured that if I could deliver an IFC to any of my consultants, to the municipality, to the owner or the contractor, it would be much easier than exporting a DWG. However, I’m loosing weeks of my work dealing with layout and dwg exports, just because I cannot export Tags from the Sketchup model, into a DWG with Layout.
It’s stupid work that makes me feel numb in the end of the day.