SketchUp doesn't accept special characters during PDF export

Good day, community. This message is for non-english and other language speakers who’s language is listed on the list of SketchUp language settings.

Trying to find the solution with export of special characters. Our native language is lithuanian and we are facing a problem of exporting lithuanian characters directly from 3D model. E.g. “š”, “ž”, “ū”, “ų” and etc. While generating export characters are being replaced with other characters.
Has anyone faced the same problem and found a solution?

Thank you!

Thanks for reporting this!

Tracked internally as SU-47515.

1 Like

I haven’t tested this for a long time but I seem to remember that this also affects our Finnish umlauts (å,ä,ö) and the reason is that the exporter uses the fonts embedded into Adobe Acrobat /Postscript that are ASCII only.
The workaround is to export from LayOut or use a PDF printer.

Labas, Paulina!

I am Latvian and I have the same problem if I export Latvian text to PDF directly from SU.

I offer you to use one of two options as a temporary solution.

  1. Save the skp file and import the model into LO. Exporting from LO to PDF works properly.

  1. If possible, use the Print function instead of the Export function. Only in this case you should uncheck “Rely on system fonts only, do not use document fonts” in the Printer Properties dialog.

Adobe-Print

For the record I’m Swedish and this bug affects my ålphäbet töö. It’s not a bug I can remember encountering myself in all my years as a SketchUp user though, probably because I usually use LayOut as Anssi suggested.

I understand that if the exporter or printer driver or whatever that creates the Postscript code that is behind the EPS and PDF formats doesn’t include and embed either full or partial copies of the fonts used in the document, the result will display using either the Times or Helvetica font that are included in the Postcript interpreter, and they only have the ASCII character set. Some 20 years or more ago this used to be a recurring problem with printers.