HI guys, I have made a 3d sketch, the quality doesn’t seem that great though, seems quite ‘cartoony’? I was sure when I was designing it, it looked a lot crisper and neat, and the tutorial videos look a lot better, could I have pressed something to make it change? thanks
Hiya,
The way SketchUp draws your model is largely a result of your Style settings. There’s a lot you can do to manipulate your Style settings, and much of what you see depends on the default settings of the style you’ve chosen. If you include an image (or copy of) your SketchUp model, we can probably give you some advice!
Mark
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Your questions provoke a bunch of return questions for clarification.
In what context does the model look “cartoony”? On the SketchUp edit view? In an exported image?
Did you choose a different style at some point? Open the Styles window and make sure you are using something simple such as the Default style.
Did you do anything to change your computer’s display settings, especially scaling, or did you connect an external monitor
@Mark is right - the best way for people here to help is if you can upload your model so we can see what you have done.
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Hi Mark,
Thanks for the reply, how would I go about posting an image, I’m pretty useless until I know how, sorry?
Ha, me too! When you are posting to the forum, click the upload icon (shaded in grey in the attached image). 
To get an image out of SketchUp, go to File > Export > 2D graphic. Or just save your SketchUp file and attach the entire .skp (that’s the SketchUp file type) to this forum thread.
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Hi,
It is in edit mode?
The only styles I can find is edge style and face style? I have p,aged about with these to no avail.
Just on laptop haven’t touched any of the settings on it.
Thanks
Thanks I will try that now! I managed to find styles, that only changes the background though this is more the stuff that I have produced.
When you open the styles window, click the little “house” to see “in model”, then hover your cursor over the selected style for a while to see what its name is.
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AutoSave_A&D Logistics Barrier.skp (448.1 KB)
Yup, that worked. It looks like some of the cartoony settings are indeed a result of your chosen style (which uses a ground plane, sky, edge profiles, and extensions).
Check out the alternative scene 10 (a and b) in the attached model. I chose a different style, and also used shadows to show some capabilities of SketchUp native rendering.LogisticsBarrier_altstyles.skp (461.0 KB)
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Compare the two attached screenshots. The first is your scene6 which shows when I open the model. the second is scene1. In scene 1, the style has edge extensions turned on, which causes little “nits” to appear at the end of each edge. Is that what you are seeing?
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Wow guys what a difference you have made, how do I take edge extensions off?
Thanks Mark, I have played about with styles again and it makes a big difference, the shadows work great as well!
I have quoted to install the barriers, intercoms and posts and traffic lights, the designer asked if I could send over a design in a cad file…I have never used anything like this so just trying to make it look as realistic as possible!
Is it easy enough to transfer over to AutoCAD, I believe that is what the designer uses? Or is there a way he could view it like you have done?
Open the styles window, click edit, and then the edge pane of the editor. In this pane you will see a checkbox for enabling extensions as well as a box to choose the extension length. Make sure to update the style after you change the settings or they won’t stick.
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If he gets the free SketchUp Viewer, he could look at your skp file. If you have the Pro version of SketchUp you can export a dwg or dxf directly. Note, however, that if you export as a 2D graphic, circles and arcs will be exported as SketchUp’s segmented representation, but a 3D model export will generate true circles in dwg.
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How did you manage to get the 2 pics like that?
I would purchase the pro version as enjoying doing it enough to justify it and will benefit in the future! so AutoCAD works on dwg? would he be able to play about with the design on AutoCAD in the same way we can?
Don’t quite get what you mean regarding segmented representation?
Heres another question sorry, in scenes, when I change to how I like it, how do I save it? went and changed scene to scene, went back and none were saved lol, is that what you meant by update slb?
Those are just screenshots. I’m on a Mac, so the specific technique wouldn’t apply to you, but there are screenshot capture tools on Windows too.
After you modify a scene, you need to right-click the scene tab at the top of the SketchUp view and choose “update”. After you modify a style, you need to click the little icon in the styles window that looks like two arrows going around in a circle to update the style.
In a SketchUp model, all circles and curves are actually represented by a sequence of short straight edges, not by a true smooth curve. You can make the circle look nice by using a greater number of edges, but it will still be really a polygon and the 2D dwg exporter captures it as such. The 3D dwg exporter looks at the original circle info and exports a true circle (when possible - some operations force SketchUp to abandon the “metadata” telling it about the true circle).
Yes, dwg and dwf are the native file formats of AutoCAD. He will be able to edit your model there, though not through the same UI as SketchUp (they are completely separate applications after all!). Also if he edits and sends it back, it may or may not re-import perfectly into SketchUp depending on what edits he did.
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