Let me preface this question by saying I’m not an extremely experienced SketchUp user. I’ve been using it mostly to model designs for woodworking and some other projects around the house. This afternoon I sat down to plan my garden for the year and as I began sketching it out, I realized this is something I could easily do with SketchUp.
Rather than measuring my yard and gardens, I decided to try geolocating it instead. When I brought the location snapshot into SketchUp I noticed it was slightly off axis. I read the help file and now I understand this is intentional. So, what is the best way to deal with this in my scenario? If I change the axis of the snapshot, then I believe anything else I add will now be off axis from it. What do I do here?
Ive found the Axis Manager extension very helpful. Native SU Axis can be confusing. The Axis Manager Extension lets you name an Axis and easily go back to a world axis or the Axis for a particular piece of geometry. Your imported geo location has a north. Remember there is a difference between true north and magnetic north. Also the Solar North Extension is handy when working with geo location. Green Axis in a scene is up but not necessarily north. Each saved scene can have its own axis. It can be confusing. Ive learned the hard way and probably could learn easier ways to manage Site data. My tip is set an Axis so its easier to draw. An example would be a roof where the Axis is set to the slope and normal roof line so you can draw normally but it is not necessarily aligned with the site axis or ???
You better rotate the geolocated map and terrain to make it fix with your model axis. Then use the solar north extension and align it to the geolacated image so you can see the shadows projected properly. You must right click on the geo located image and unlock it to be able to move and rotate it, it can be done also from the outliner. The terrain uses to be in a hidden layer.
1 Like
In SketchUp Pro 2024, geolocation is no longer dependent on the green axis but on the north direction. The north direction can be changed in the model, allowing you to orientate the geolocation without having to rotate your 3D model. But you need to know exactly the north position of your model in advance because the current version of the Add Location tool does not offer a map rotation function when you set the location. A post describes the problem here : Add Location - Rotate Model? . Following this post, I’ve added a feature to the “Face Orientation Checker” tool to help match the terrain orientation exactly with the model. How it works is explained in this video:
The tool is available in the" Find And Report Suite", available for free on the Extension Warehouse and SketchUcation Store Extension.*
You need version 0.701.5 that is now available from the SketchUcation Store Extension. If you’re using the Sketchup Extension Warehouse, it’s still version 0.701.4. To get the latest version, you can update it via the menu Extensions >> Find And Report >> About the Wisext tools >> Search fo an update.
Since version 1.5.9 of “SketchUp Add Location” (July 2024), it is no longer possible to orient the map according to the north direction defined in the model. “Add Location” modifies the model’s north so that it always follows the Y axis. Unfortnately, what is described in this post is therefore no longer possible.
I hope that this feature will return in future versions. In the meantime, it is possible to rotate the north direction directly in the ‘SketchUP Add Location’ tool from version 1.7.3.