Hey all.
I’ve looked through a bunch of other forum posts, but wondering if anyone can share some futher insight into exporting from Layout to DWG.
I have played around with many different settings and still get feedback from other consultants that the DWG exports I send them are virtually unusable.
I am missing something? Is Layout just that terrible at exporting to DWG? Is there a better way? A better plugin or app or work around?
Thanks
I went through the same thing with my consultants.
I did manage to find export settings that improved the outcome. The only issue left to resolve is that if a line has other lines intersecting it, LO will export each section of line between intersections as a separate line. This creates at least one if not two orders of magnitude more lines within a file than are needed, which makes the file larger and slower to work with.
Checkout this thread for setting:
It really depends on what the ultimate goal is. What kind of settings have you used?
If I had to communicate with my local engineers, I would make sure all my SketchUp viewports are set to Vector rendering. Then I would use the “Export for SketchUp” export option and open the exported DWG in CAD and scale it back up to full scale.
I made a FR years ago to SketchUp to include the upscaling option to the export options directly.
Here are the settings that I have been using with the best results. The only reason we ever export to DWG is for the consultants so that they dont have to redraw the plan in order to produce their documents. It’s really for their benefit, but it does make our company look a bit mickey mouse if we can’t produce a useable file.
We do not have a CAD program capable of modifying a DWG file, so I cannot use the export for sketchup feature and change the scale.
Basically there is nothing wrong with these. It is just that engineers tend to ignore everything in your exports that is on the “Paper space” tab, that is, everything like texts, dimensions, title blocks that you have put on the LayOut page.
For consultants (engineers), I typically check “export for SketchUp”. This setting will effectively export everything to model space, model and annotations, but will export everything not to scale. Also, “ignore fills”
My typical workflow:
Take each page and scale up (or down) accordingly. Sounds difficult, but it’s really easy, since each page is a block. For instance, if I have a floorplan at 1:50 scale, I’ll select the corresponding page, and scale it up by a factor of 50. If all your pages are at the same scale, then scale all the drawing.
Turn off display of lineweights, and ltscale to adjust dash scale. Typically, if I scale the drawing up by 50, I’ll set ltscale to 50 as well.
Check ddunits, to make sure that the drawing units are correct, in case it’s inserted or referenced into another file.
Get rid of all image references, if you have hybrid viewports or external images. To display images, it’s always easier to reference a pdf file.
Purge.
Tell the recipient to switch it’s CAD background color to white or light gray. Or, try exporting as “color by layer” but that option will probably loose a lot of color info in the original LO file.
There are a couple of free or low cost dwg editors or AutoCAD clones you could try, or even online cad programs that can work. NanoCAD
I would never send a dwg to a consultant, without simplifying it. They for the most part, don’t care about dimensions, fills etc.
Anyone else have any thoughts? So far the best option I see it to rely on a secondary CAD program to upscale a Sketchup export. Really dissapointing that I cannot export a set of layout drawings as a CAD file and have it be useable by others. @colin do you have any thoughts?
I know more about exporting DWG from SketchUp. @trent may have some thoughts.
Hi Phil-JGD, as Anssi has stated the settings you have selected would be the best for your situation. This creates Model and Paperspace information for you, the SketchUp (1:1) data in the model space and provides viewports in the Paperspace at the proper scale. Any Paperspace information will be placed in the Paperspace.
The consultant should be able to open the dwg and access the Model space info.
We know we have limitations with our exporter (and importer) are working to improve the dwg workflow moving forward.
Trent
Thanks @trent
Agreed, dwg exporter needs some extra work, but… I would never ever, ever, ever send a dwg without checking and a bit of editing. Akin to sending a text without proofreading, so yes, having a dwg editor is a must, if you’re sending info to others frequently.
You need to know what the recipient wants to do with the DWG. All my documentation is issued as PDF. If I get a request for DWGs it is either for a basic trace reference or to be used as a base point for new drawings. My solution is to send a DWG exported from SU and a relevant PDF (which takes precedence) and let the recipient work it out from there. I have been on the flip side receiving exported DWGs that contained everything complete with a layer naming system that was utter chaos. In my view a simple relevant base drawing is generally all that is required.
