I am having issues exporting my plan page from LayOut to DWG. I’ve read through the other LayOut to DWG posts, and the only one that kind of looks like my issue says to explode the viewport. It seems like exporting to an industry-standard dwg file should be easy and common, so I feel like I am missing a step or something.
I have tried different settings in the export menu but can’t get LayOut to create a suitable dwg file to send to the Surveyor.
I stopped trying to export DWG from Layout a few years ago – maybe it’s easier now or maybe like you there was something I missed.
There’s going to be different requirements for other consultants and regulatory regimes but what I do with the structural engineers I collaborate with is to send them PDFs from Layout and DWG linework from SketchUp.
Obviously you will lose all comments, measures, etc. that you added in Layout but you will get a rather decent DXF File with LAYERS!!! I am experimenting with it right now and like what I am seeing. The only thing I don’t get about this plugin. If @Cyentruk can do it - why can’t Trimble implement this natively…
Checking the “export for SketchUp” box creates a DWG model space representation of your LayOut page, using “paper space” scale, so to make it usable for the surveyor you must open it in AutoCad and scale everything up to get back to full scale.
Unchecking the box puts things inside your SketchUp viewports at full scale to the Model space in the DWG while the annotations etc. you have on the LO page are put in Paper space.
Note too that Raster rendered SketchUp viewports are exported as embedded raster images, so usually you should use Vector rendering.
Thanks.
Unchecking the “export for SketchUp” got me a bit closer, but some foundation drawing lines are missing. LOL - This is frustrating.
Not being able to provide industry-standard information to other professionals does not help the perception that real professionals don’t use SketchUp!
The latest output with “export for SketcUp” turned off.
I export all my projects to IFC and measure them in 4D BIM software. With some rules to classify each object I get the quantity takeoff almost automatically. I don’t need 2D drawings.
You can post your LayOut file to see what others can get out of it.
The “missing” foundation lines may be there, but they might have been exported as RGB white lines so they won’t show on a white ACAD background. Try the “Color by Layer” option.
