I’m a relative beginner to SketchUp in many ways, with one being importing surfaces from Civil3D. My work focus is land development and we do essentially all of our work in AutoCAD Civil3D. We get lots of GIS, survey, and linework which needs to be located/sized correctly so we utilize co-ordinate systems, scale factors, etc. From these, we create various figures to show a variety of concepts and designs using real world information. What we are trying to implement now is a better way to showcase these figures and so have begun exploring SketchUp’s capabilities.
I’ve tried to bring in contours from Civil3D into SketchUp, and they seem to come in correctly with elevations but not in the proper location. From my research/readings, It seems like SketchUp uses it’s own co-ordinates and my files come in currently at 0,0.
It would be nice to be able to use SketchUp’s Geo imagery as a background, and other elements that are based on that, so I’m trying to find a way to get my imported CAD to ‘align.’ I’m not sure the best approach as additional files could be added later on and I’d rather not try to move them manually to ‘best fit.’
Any recommendations, links, or advice is appreciated!
The default SketchUp import setting for DWG files bring the imported things to the model origin point. There is a “preserve drawing origin” checkbox available in import options, but it is not feasible to keep models to map coordinates that are most often thousands of kilometers from the origin, as it causes the SketchUp display system to fail with ugly artifacts and weird behaviour.
SketchUp doesn’t have a native “survey point” type system for aligning models to map coordinates using various coordinate systems. SketchUp geolocation uses its origin as a “survey point” to place the model into a global lat/long coordinate system as used by services like Google Maps.
Thank you for your response. I figured it worked as you said based on the results I got when I was experimenting with it. I guess my question should be more advice on how to best work between the two to get the best results. Maybe there’s something I can do on the Civil3D side or Sketchup side to help align them once they are brought into SketchUp.
Currently my thoughts are putting a circle/shape with the contours in CAD, on a spot visible on an aerial map overlaid in CAD. Then trying to move the imported CAD drawing to that spot in SketchUp’s to line up geo image as best I can?
Perhaps someone has a better solution, or approach that works well for them.