Rhino to SketchUp keeping layer hierarchy

SketchUp Pro
1

Hello,

We have a big architectural plan done in Rhino 6. It’s very accurate and all nested layers are neatly organized.

Now we have some people in the field who work only with Sketchup. We tried to export from Rhino 6 to Sketchup 2020 and it is sort of working, but is not keeping the layer structure. There’s a lot of in-context information inside those layers.

Is there any good workflow or plugin or script that would bring the layer organization into Sketchup?

Thanks,

2

I’m not a Rhino user, so I did some quick searches to see what they are about. It seems like they are somewhat more like SketchUp layers/tags than what is found in typical 2D applications, but also cover considerably more properties. Some of the properties have no equivalent in SketchUp or are handled in ways unrelated to tags. Also, what I read said that a Rhino layer can appear in more than one hierarchy.

So, until/unless SketchUp implements similar capabilities there will inevitably be some loss of function beyond just the hierarchical nesting of layers. That begs the question: would a simple hierarchy of visibility tags provide the model semantics you need?

3

Alright. What if I modify the Rhino model to have no nested layers. Just one layer of hierarchy. The layers do not come in their original order in SketchUp. That’s pretty annoying.

4

I can appreciate how that would lose some of their original meaning. At this time the SketchUp layers/tags window only presents the tags sorted in alphanumeric order by name. It does not understand or support any other ordering. You could preserve order if you use a prefix on your Rhino layer names to affect this sorting. It could even involve a multi-part prefix to remember the hierarchy, such as A-A, A-B, etc. Yeah, that’s an annoying workaround.

5

I’m also looking to give this a try, although sounds too good to be true - Rhino to SketchUp Exporter | Importer, Converter, plug-in, add-on, Tools

1 Like
6

Hi Ignacio, running into the same issue. Wanted to follow up and see if this Exporter Plug-in worked for you? or if you had any other solutions?