Floorplan push/pull problem

blargalarg

Hello,

I am having a problem with the push/pull tool. I have imported a CAD file of a floor plan into SketchUP, but I am unable to select but a few pieces of the walls to raise with the push/pull tool. I've flattened the layers and tried selecting everything and locking it, or making it a component, or whatever, in the hopes that it would 'join' all the edges together and allow me to push/pull.

Question: is there a way to force it to recognize the image as being flat and joined, so that I can just push/pull it easily, or do I have to trace the whole thing? It's a fairly substantial floor plan so time is a factor. I would hope there would be some sort of plugin or something specifically designed for working with imported floorplans. Anyone know of a solution?

Thanks for reading this,
-Jack

Chris Fullmer

Hi Jack, this is a common issue. In autocad, the lines don't actually intersect, they overlap. This causes problems in SketchUp. It wants lines to actually break at intersections. So each time aline meets up with another line, it needs to be broken into a new line. Todd Burch has written a script that does this quite nicely in SketchUp. It is called intersectoverlaps and you can get it at Smustard.com for a few bucks. He has a whole suite of CAD cleanup scripts that also include l"straylines" which labels all lines that don't meet up with another line. This is particularly helpful to find lines that look like they meet up nicely, but actually have a minute gap. It makes it easy to find them and zoom in and connect them manually if necessary. After the cad file is cleaned up, run MakeFaces on it to make usable faces that you can then push/pull. Hope that helps.

Chris

Edit: Here's a direct link to intersect overlaps. It lists a few other usefuls cad scripts on this page. Some are free, some cost money:

http://www.smustard.com/script/IntersectOverlaps

I should also mention that there is a free Autocad LISP that will do the same as intersect overlaps. It is called qbrick. You can find it here:

http://www.synapse-informatique.com/qbrick_en.htm

Chris

blargalarg

Thank you very much, Chris. I appreciate the help.

-Jack