I’m pretty new to Sketch-up; is there a way to scale the imported pdf floor plan? I was able to import it but when I zoom in, everything is blurry and didn’t have an option to scale. Please helps, thank you!
You can resize the imported image but it’s unlikely to improve the blurriness of the image. Perhaps the simplest way to handle this is to use the Line tool to trace a line in the image whose length you know. Then use the Tape Measure tool to measure that line making sure you click at each end. Next, type the length that line should be and hit enter. You’ll be asked if you want to resize the model. Click Yes and Bob’s yer uncle.
As for the blurriness, you might find you get a better image if you first select Use maximum texture size in Preferences>OpenGL. Find Preferences under the SketchUp menu to the left of File. You’ll need to import the image again to see any change.
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you can check your pdf in Preview.app using the + button…
if it stays nice and clean it is a vector pdf and should look as good in SU…
if it goes blurry then it’s raster and will be harder to work with…
john
John,
I seem to remember that you use a Mac? PDF import is a Mac only feature, but I understood that importing turns the PDF into a raster image - have I been mistaken? I have thought that the only way to import vector lines from PDF to SU is to convert the thing first into DWG or DXF using Illustrator, CorelDraw or Inkscape.
Anssi
I have been able to successfully make use of pdf files by performing an easy online conversion (from pdf to dwg or dxf) and importing the result directly into SketchUp. It then becomes a simple matter to scale the file appropriately.
I use the following site (http://www.zamzar.com/) to perform free conversions and it can be used to convert various files into many different formats.
Inkscape is a professional vector graphics editor for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It’s free and open source.
You can convert vector PDF files to DXF files with Inkscape for import into SketchUp Pro.
No, your right, I forgot I wrote a plugin that ‘converts’ them to dxf first when I click ‘Import PDF’ in my File menu…
and I haven’t made it public, so I really should remember, oops…
john
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There are a great many technical problems with importing a vector PDF directly into SketchUp, mainly due to radically different imaging models (PDF “paints” a page by drawing paths and filling them; it has no underlying geometric model). So, as the others have already pointed out, it is usually best to let some other app do the work of converting the PDF to geometry, e.g. a dwg, and then importing that into SketchUp.
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