Exporting from RHINO into SketchUP

I would like to share some of my experience with importing 3D models from RHINO and I am asking for more tips on this.

I collaborate with people using RHINO, so I experimented a bit with different formats.

.skp: It sounds like the obvious choice, but for me, it doesn’t seem to work as well as the other formats below.

.obj: I found that OBJ is only working well, but doesn’t keep the groups, so I tend to use the following formats instead.

.dae: Imports well…the file generated is bigger than the .fbx generated from the same RHINO file, but surprisingly when re-saved as .skp it seems to be smaller. Sometimes some geometry is missing.

.fbx: seems to work well, especially because it seems to me that when exporting from RHINO it automatically meshes the poly-surfaces together and there is a slider to determine the level of polygons/compression. ( I might be wrong, but I think it’s equivalent to meshing and reducing the mesh before exporting from RHINO). The downside is that there is a need for an extension to open it in SketchUp.

.3ds: similar to .fbx there is a slider to determine how to export this file from RHINO. The file generated was way bigger than the .fbx, but once re-saved as .skp the size is similar to .fbx - if the was reduced the same amount in RHINO.

Now exporting from SketchUp to RHINO is a different matter, and .dea worked best for me so far, but havent try .3ds yet. FBX failed, the file genetated waas very big and when opened in Maya and Rhino, the geometry was missing and a bit muddled.

Any suggestion to prepare the models to export from eithert software is welcome.

What I do in Rhino is to convert all geometry to meshes and use the REDUCEMESH command prior to exporting as SketchUp. This gives a better level of control than the other options. I usually do a more drastic polygon reduction than what the default options give, as the Rhino conversion from NURBS to mesh creates meshes that are insanely dense from the SketchUp viewpoint.

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I was experimenting with this just yesterday.
I used a photogrammetry app to make a model of a prop for a film I’m working on.
It let me email myself an obj which I imported into Rhino and then exported to Sketchup.
SU crashed as soon as I tried to rotate, group, do anything to the geometry really.
Then I remembered the reducemesh command and the next export worked perfectly.
My workmates were thoroughly impressed, I think!

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