Easiest way to convert sketchup scenes to native dwg files

[arisleme]

Hi everyone,
I have a problem and I would appreciate some help:
I need to produce detailed Cad documentation for about 20 sketchup projects to give to a client.
Each project has about 20-30 scenes which are layered and stylized like the picture bellow:

I have found that doing it through layout is extremely slow and hard (especially if you turn on vector for large scenes) plus the exported .dwg needs even more cleaning in autocad.

The fastest way is to export 2d .dwg from each scene and continue working them in autocad. but this has also its challenges:

1. in SU, I have to export each scene separately
2. in Autocad, shapes are not exported to their respective layer but are all combined in “profileedges” and “sectioncutedges” layers, they just have the color of the layer they belonged to within sketchup.
3. in Autocad, each of the above layers follow the pattern “filename-profiledges” and “filename-sectioncutedges” which means that for 20 scenes that I import to autocad from sketchup I will have 40 ‘unreconcilled’ layerrs plus the hustle of having to organize everything in layers again.

If you were assigned this task, how would you go about turning each scene into a 2D drawing while retainging the layers? Possibly with a plugin?
any suggestion might be helpful!

P.S.
I even thought of importing the model in autocad as 3d and use base views but I found it hard to turn them into native solids/surfaces so I dropped it. Maybe I should explore this road more?

[mihai.s]

@arisleme

Possibly with a plugin?

DWG Export with layers

I’m sorry TIG, but I disagree! The AutoCAD 2D (hiddenline) export doesn’t use the SketchUp layers but the Skalp 2D export place every line on the correct SketchUp layer. SketchUp export: [image] Skalp export: [image] Only layer of the windows visible: [image]

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@arisleme

in Autocad, shapes are not exported to their respective layer but are all combined in “profileedges” and “sectioncutedges” layers, they just have the color of the layer they belonged to within sketchup.

In Autocad, run one of these lisp routines and layers will be automatically created and assigned to each object according to color:

DWG Export with layers

In AutoCAD run this routine Lisp (defun c: ColortoLayer (/ ActDoc LayCol LayClr tmpLay) (setq ActDoc (vla-get-ActiveDocument (vlax-get-Acad-Object)))) (setq LayCol (vla-get-Layers ActDoc)) (vlax-for Layout ( vla-get-Layouts ActDoc) (vlax-for Obj (vla-get-Block Layout) (setq LayClr (vla-get-Color Obj)) (if (vl-catch-all-error-p (vl-catch-all -aplicar 'vla-Item (list LayCol (itoa LayClr)))) (progn (setq tmpLay (vla-Adicionar LayCol (itoa LayClr))) (vla-put-Color tmpLay LayClr) ) ) (v…

DWG Export with layers

(defun c:ColortoLayer (/ ActDoc LayCol LayClr tmpLay) (setq ActDoc (vla-get-ActiveDocument (vlax-get-Acad-Object))) (setq LayCol (vla-get-Layers ActDoc)) (vlax-for Layout (vla-get-Layouts ActDoc) (vlax-for Obj (vla-get-Block Layout) (setq LayClr (vla-get-Color Obj)) (if (vl-catch-all-error-p (vl-catch-all-apply 'vla-Item (list LayCol (itoa LayClr)))) (progn (setq tmpLay (vla-Add LayCol (itoa LayClr))) (vla-put-Color tmpLay LayClr) ) ) (vla-put-Layer Obj (itoa LayClr)) (vla-put-Colo…

Of course, in SketchUp, before exporting dwg files, set the Style > Edge Settings > Color by material; Modeling Settings > Color by tag

Google Sketchup Tutorial 13-Export to AutoCAD with layer

[TheOnlyAaron]

If this was something I did a lot, and I could control/reuse the scene names then I would create a template in LO one time that would autopopulate the pages with the scenes.

[arisleme]

I am starting to suspect that LO is very slow just for me…
I have a very strong rig, huge ram (64G) and every program works fine. LO is lagging considerably though when dealing anything heavier than a simple model, but I don’t see other people complaining. I don’t know if most people don’t use it for big scenes or there is something wrong with my installation.
That’s why I always use autocad for plotting.

I ended up buying skalp but I still have the problem of the name convention (scenes are exported as separate .dwg files and the layers have the file’s name for some reason. (e.g. ‘villa-top-concrete’ then ‘villa-front-concrete’ then ‘villa-section-concrete’ so I have as many ‘concrete’ layers as the scenes in sketchup)

This means that I either have to explode the references (not good because with any change I cannot just update the reference) or have the layers repeated for every scene I import (for a model with 10 layers and 10 scenes I end up with 100 layers)