I’m using SU to produce graphic images for tech documentation. I’m given a complex model, and what I need to do is get into the model and get images of each component by itself. There’s a great deal of nesting, so “Select All, Shift click component, Hide” isn’t ideal.
I have a bunch of these and I’m trying to optimize workflow as best I can. The ideas I’ve come up with so far:
Open a “workspace” session and copy paste each model, take the image, then delete.
Go through outliner and assign components to one visible layer one at a time, take image, then change back.
“Select All, Shift click component, Hide”. There’s a great deal of nesting, so this one isn’t ideal.
Is there a setting I can change so that using the Edit component function with Hide Rest of Model would allow me to take the images without having to make any changes to the model itself? Any other ideas?
What version of SketchUp are you using? Your profile is incomplete.
There was an extension that would allow you to export an image of only a component that was opened into Edit mode. Unfortunately it doesn’t work in later versions of SketchUp.
Having an example file illustrating what you are trying to accomplish would help but I think your best option is to assign components to different layers and control their visibility to show only what you need. You could create a range of scenes with different components made visible. Then, to speed up the process, you can export an animation but choose Image Set. SketchUp will then export an image for each scene in the model.
i don’t know whether this would suit your case, but i requested it a while ago. The line of code when run in the ruby console populates layers in the model per every component definition and assigns any instances of those components to those layers (including nested). Its then a matter of showing/hiding these layers and then creating scenes for each component as Dave suggests.
You can use FredoPortrait, which does precisely generate images from any individual object or set of objects (groups, components or any entities like faces, edges, …) without touching layers, scenes, and visibility. You can generate in PNG, JPG, BMP, TIF and PDF vector. You can choose the view for the image.
Hi Fredo! Amazing plugin, as always! Thanks a lot!
I’m here to suggest a little implementation: would it be possible to specify the ratio of the exported image?
It would be very handy…
