I exported my SU model as a PDF so I can open it in Illustrator. I can open the PDF with adobe acrobat just fine- everything shows up and looks fine. However, when I open the PDF in Illustrator, half of my model is not there (the part that is showing up are just lines from SketchUp, the part that is missing is the actual 3D model). EDGE 5th Floor.pdf (2.2 MB)
How did you export? Did you print this to PDF? The Export function in SketchUp Pro doesn’t support raster images so this is not produced by using that. If you are printing to PDF and want editable lines, you must use the Vector printing option. If you used a scanned image as you background, vector printing will ignore that.
PDF is basically a 2D format so what you get is basically an image of what you see on your SketchUp screen. There is a 3D PDF format that can be viewed in Adobe Reader, but to produce one from SketchUp you need a third party export plugin.
Anssi
I just did File- Export- 2D Graphic- PDF
How do I print to PDF? Im still not understanding why half of my model just disappears in Illustrator but is visible in the PDF when I view it using adobe.
I’d be inclined to look at Illustrator for the problem since the lines show in Adobe Reader/Acrobat.
Why not use LayOut and render as Vector before exporting as a PDF?
If I import the pdf into Inkscape I see the SketchUp 3d part is raster lines. So thats why Illustrator doesn’t import anything. Question is: why does SketchUp export a raster image?
I also opened the file in Illustrator. It has a raster image. Are you using a scanned plan as a background? Can you post the SketchUp model?
Anssi
No, the background plan is just drawn lines in SU. The model is too big to upload…not sure how to share it…
maybe you can just copy a small part of the model that doesn’t export well to pdf and paste it into a new sketchup file and upload that file?
Have you ever purged your model? I am downloading it now, but the file is enormous.
Anssi
Probably because of the amount of components in it…but no I have never done that.
The model has more than 5 million edges and almost 3 million faces. Most of these are, I would guess, in the extremely detailed chair components that probably weren’t created with Sketchup. Using simpler versions would probably help. There didn’t in fact seem to be much to purge.
Exporting a PDF took its time, but here it is. The original was too big but it went to about 1/10 of the size when optimized with an old version of Acrobat Pro. To me it looked the same in Acrobat or IllustratorAutoSave_Final EDGE_2b.pdf (1.8 MB)
I wonder now if there is a difference between the PDF exporters in the PC and Mac?
Anssi
TIGs purgeall plugin reduced the file from 377 to 261Mb so thats quite a lot.
Exporting on my win10X64 laptop went fine for a small part. Pdf is real vector lines. Maybe indeed a Mac thing ?
@sophiaray30 You can print to PDF by following these steps:
Select File > Print…
Click Show Details
Under Print Quality is a checkbox for Vector Printing - make sure this is checked
In the bottom-left corner of the dialog, click the PDF pull-down
Select Save as PDF…
Name the file and click Save
In Layout 2022, there is no longer an option for Vector Printing–I’m missing my vector drawings.
Perhaps it’s not layout but macOS?
I don’t think there ever was. This thread and @mchandler 's instructions are about printing and exporting from SketchUp.
From LayOut, the idea is to set your model views to use Vector rendering (or Hybrid) and Export to PDF instead of printing. I don’t know how the Mac’s printer driver processes vector views.
Usually, raster rendering is quite enough if you don’t need to do some kind of postprocessing or to get clean AutoCad files. But set your Export resolution to High and don’t use JPG compression when exporting to PDF.
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