Hello All,
I am trying to import and edit a map for planning purposes. I am being sent a .dxf file, which I am told is in colour (as per the Ordnance Survey maps in the UK). When I open it, there is no colour at all. Am I missing a setting? The sample file I have been sent is included below:
Coloured_standard.dxf (412.1 KB)
Basics of SketchUp at learn.sketchup.com - styles
Ah ha! That makes sense. Thanks very much. OS maps have specific colour for the objects; I wonder if there is a way of finding the RGB codes for them
It might be desirable to have a coloured Location Plan â I guess thatâs what the OS DXF is forâŚ?
I donât produce coloured Location Plans, just black linework.
Itâs supposed to look something like this:
Yes - thatâs what I am trying to produce. I want to add on the extension I am proposing in SketchUp, so that the dimensions and scaling is spot on. I want to be able to keep the OS colour scheme though. I just think it looks more interesting.
Thanks for the info, Adam, Paul!
I donât think the planners are going be bothered if itâs colour or black and white.
Will you be submitting via the Planning Portal ?
Just that with the recent price hike you can now do coloured Location Plans at the Portal and itâs included in Portalâs service charge.
Perfect - It seems like Iâm probably overthinking it. Yes - I will be using the Planning Portal, so thatâs good news.
I think MapServe will probably lose some customers.
Although Iâm not entirely happy with the Portalâs Location Plans ( they do the job though ) and I may continue to do my own â but it does save some time doing it at the Portal.
Well I just wanted to show the extent of the building works we are proposing in the OS Map, so that you can see it in relation to the neighbouring houses
It would be great if SketchUp could import OS maps with colours. Unfortunately, the OS colours are hatches, whereas SketchUp uses faces for colour, so they donât convert when you import.
It can however be relatively quick to recolour a plan to match. I firstly select all the building edges (right click, select all with same tag). Iâm not certain, but this may need the free âselection toysâ extension.
Then copy and paste, save as a component and name it something like âbuilding facesâ. Then drag the newly created faces component to align with the plan. You now have all the faces coloured. That in itself may be enough to improve the appearance and also highlights the buildings.
If you want everything coloured, you can then either manually colour everything (or just the site area) or again use an extension to save time, this time âEneroth Face Creatorâ. Most if not all the remaining faces will then be filled (you can lift the building faces component up the Z axis to avoid the faces clashing). You will need to tidy it up a bit and recolour. The attached shows a good approximation of colours using SketchUpâs named colours. You can adjust the RGB values if you want to refine it.
SKP > 2D plan_coloured_standard.skp (590.4 KB)
Thanks Kenny. That looks like it works. I have downloaded the extension and have got to the stage where I have created the component. However, this has not created faces for me. I wonder if I have somehow missed out a stage?
Hi Mihai, I still canât see how you have infilled the colours.
he has made faces. when you import a dxf/dwg, you get lines, you have to make faces out of them, either by hand, or using extensions (like Eneroth Face Creator).
once you have faces between the lines, you can simply use the material tool, with the right colour.
Hi loubydesigns. Hopefuly youâve figured it out. As ateliernab mentioned, you need to make faces. I wasnât clear on the first stage for the building faces, you need to either manually create faces or run âEneroth Face Creatorâ before saving the faces as a component.
One other point regarding OS Maps is that as well as hatches, SketchUp also doesnât display text in OS Maps. The text you see in Mihaiâs plan has to be created with another step before importing. It has been a long time feature request to import text but if you also wanted text there are workarounds. I use the free CAD programme Imsi DoubleCad XT. You import your DWG plan into DoubleCad, then export to DWG with all the options checked to explode it. Then import the DoubleCad DWG to SketchUp, and as with building edges, select the text tag and make a component. The text as a component can then be hidden or displayed as necessary.
Yes - I have just figured this out. Essentially, I have now joined the lines to create faces. I am now playing around with the RGB codes, so that they look like the original OS maps; the RGB codes are readily available. There doesnât seem to be a workaround to this - just seems like you have to trace over the OS map and then colour it in yourself. I am just intrigued now as to why I have paid specifically for a âfilled colourâ map from UK Planning Maps?
