Urban Planner - Shadows Modeling

Greetings -

I am an urban planner who uses sketchup to primarily model shadows impacts to sunlight sensitive resources. After geolocating my model in sketchup I usually import a 2D basemap I created in ArcGIS into that Sketchup Model and resize / orient that image to match the sketchup geolocation snapshort and terrain. It’s usually an exercise in patience and can be time consuming.

Basically, I’m writing here to try and identify the best way to import the image into sketchup that reduces / eliminates manipulating the size / orientation (which I’m guessing involves exporting the basemap I created to a certain size, etc.). I just want to reduce headaches trying to line up the imagery and try and have everything sized up correctly so there’s no image manipulation Any suggestions / advice? From there I can figure out the drape / stamp tool and all of that.

Apologies if this has been addressed before, I’m new to this online community.

Thank you in advance

What type of image (JPG, PNG…) do you import in general (as a 2D basemap)?
Did you try importing a PDF file that is in vector format, and could also contain georeference information?

Greetings -

I export to .png from arcmap for sketchup imports

No need to export anything.
Here’s one way to align the imported image to the Snapshot.

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I don’t know if it can be used in your situation, but the free Qgis application can export a vector file to DXF format that can be imported directly into SketchUp Pro at the correct scale (with the right import settings), and used as a base for modelling.

Some more information or screenshot of one of our projects would be helpful here to be able to provide more specific advice. There’s two workflows, as noted by the other posters already…One is importing 2D image like an aerial photo or screenshot. Any image export will have been scaled to fit your screen and/or specified print dimensions and therefore you’ll have to go through the scaling exercise you’ve already noted:

There are different ways to do this 2D image import and scaling process which may or may not help speed up your current workflow. I’m happy to elaborate if this is your process.

The second method is using ‘live’ linework exports like DXF/DWG instead of a .png. These are real world scale or 1:1 scale as you know.