Question re: importing auto cad files

Please correct me if I am wrong in my understanding. There are a couple ways to deal with the imported dwf file - one, for a floor plan is to import it, then put it on a layer, create scenes, with it on and off, then redraw the model on a different layer, and using the scenes as a guide. Thus you have a SU model of the imported floor plan.

Another version is to create a group of the imported model ( if it’s not already a group ), then exploding it. In this scenario, you can then directly edit the original lines with SU tools.

*** I have tried to do this several times, but when I select the drawing, and right click to group or explode it, it simply ceases to be selected. When I open the pull down edit window, the options to make group or component are greyed out. what am I doing wrong? it seemed so easy in the video I saw.

Edit - I found my error - on the bottom of the pull down window - there was a: component (1) option which I clicked and found the option to explode it. Amazing.

The advantage of the first is you don’t have to worry and deal with lines that don’t touch, and finding the gaps and correcting them since you have made a new model. The advantage with the second is you can utilize the already completed drawing.

Then with layout, if you have, for instance, an auto cad detail of a footing, you import it into SU, modify it if needed, then import it into layout.

That brings to mind a question: what if you want all of the labels etc that are in the auto cad drawing? Can you import it as an image into SU and then into layout?

Are there other ways?

Thanks,

G

@TIG wrote an extension that imports text objects from a drawing separately. Perhaps that might work?

As @DanRathbun says I wrote an importer for DXF file’s text.
You must import the CAD geometry data using the original CAD-origin, then the DXF text, to maintain the relative locations.
You’ll probably need to relocate everything after those two steps… if it’s arrived miles from the SKP origin !

Any CAD file “text” [Mtext/Dtext/TextAttribs] is converted into flattened-3dText, using the equivalent size, layer/color, font, style, line-breaks etc.
It does not work with DWG, it needs DXF - and making the DXF as an older version will be safer…
Get it from here…