Section cuts print/export to scale for Windows

SketchUp Feature Requests
1

I’m teaching Sketchup in the first semester of the Architecture programme at LTH, Lund university, Sweden. During my teaching I’ve encountered a couple of tools, features and techniques that might be improved, to have a more coherent logic in relation to the rest of the software.

  • Print/export sections to scale in Windows. While making a layout in Layout is fine for a production environment, for beginners and more modelling oriented people, getting a section out of Sketchup in scale is a nuisance. I would love something that abides by the print dialog logic, just set your scale and quality and get expected results. And the same for export to pdf, if possible. On mac, it works as expected!
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When the camera is set to parallel projection, you can adjust output scale setting with [File]menu [Document Setup…]
Pages is depend on Page size / direction and SketchUp’s window (working area) size.

example
A3 landscape paper size = 420 mm x 297 mm
Scale = 1:100

1816×1522 101 KB

  1. Draw 420000mm x 29700mm Rectangle (and your model, layout inside here)
  2. Zoom Extends (Shift + Z)
  3. Adjust working space aspect ratio to Paper Sized Rectangle.(important)
  4. Zoom up little, while Paper Sized Rectangle frame out.
    (Printable area is smaller than paper size.)
  5. Set Document Setting to above.
    (Width and Height value depends on your zoom uped status, You have to set Print Scale.)
  6. You can print out S=1/100
    (on mac we can save as PDF on print dialogue.)
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Thanks for the reply, that method of making a paper to scale is helpful for grasping 1:1 modelling scale in Sketchup.

But I was thinking specifically about exporting sections to scale. Actually, on mac there is no problem, both printing to pdf and exporting to pdf is fine for exporting to scale. I have updated the subject and first post to reflect that.

Mostly, I’m using/teaching the print to pdf method, described here for Windows Printing Views of a Model in Microsoft Windows | SketchUp Help and here for mac Printing Views of a Model in Mac OS X | SketchUp Help. That technique enables you to get pixel graphics to scale too.

Thinking more about this, it would probably be possible to make a better export to scale feature all together, with helpful error checking (Your model is not in parallell projection!), paper space preview and mix pixel and vector graphics options. People will now tell me about Layout… but I’m just after an Export function, not having to switch to another software to get stuff to scale.

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