For my career I often make use of PDF ground plans.
I have never been able to import these plans directly into sketchup, and so I have been cutting out the plans with Photoshop to turn them into jpg’s.
That has always been time consuming, and therefor I toke the step to research if I am missing out on something.
However I have had no luck so far. Is there someone who can help me out with the golden hint?
The problem I am having, is that when I turn the PDF into an single JPG, Is that I lose a lot of quality. The result is a very unsharp visual, what is supposed to be as sharp as seen in the PDF. So I have been cutting the PDF’s into multiple (more zoomed-in) JPG’s.
There must be a better or faster way. Anyone?
Hope my question is clear enough, this is kinda my first forum post.
Are your pdfs usually based on vector data? If so, have you tried (using a vector drawing package) saving/converting the pdf file in to a dwg or dxf?
Sketchup Pro can read and use dwg and dxf files
If your pdf is basd on raster images, the the only way I’m aware of to get high resolution jpeg is to save it as a high resolution jpeg, although this inevitably increases file size and can lead to weird issues if you model with complicated styles turned on (which is very inefficient and processor intensive) You might also want to go here Window>Preferences>OpenGL and check if you have ‘use maximum texture size’ checked. Search the forum threads for more info about this…
I have often asked my work colleagues and friends in the business (and searched the threads here too) about this issue and it seems as thought everyone sort of muddles through it.
I ask if the client can supply clean and ordered dwg files. Honesty works… sometimes… That sometimes works…
Making use of the Maximum texture seems to help a lot, amazing! Thank you so much.
Sadly it gave a warning that this requires a strong graphic card, something my work pc does not have.
Still it is very good to know, and sometimes this will come in handy!
I have tried making vector images from the PDF’s before with Inkscape. This sometimes works but often I get pdf’s with lots of text in them. That gives that option some problems sometimes.
Yes I have the same issue with complex files that have been saved as pdf files. I go into the vector drawing package and delete all the text and useless layers of lines (especially if the file has been created in Vectorworks), then save it again as my working file to import… As of yet I haven’t found a satisfactory solution other than either asking nicely that the client supplies a cleaner plan or cleaning it up myself…
That sometimes works…