Exporting to autocad for printing

[spc450]

in the past i have found that exporting to autocad gives me better printing results than i have been able to acheive in layout. i was looking for feedback on what other feel about this approach.
thank you steve

[Gaieus]

Exporting to Autocad (from SU) results in a vector based graphic which if you further tweak in a 3rd party app,will still retain its vector based features.

From LO you can only export PDF or raster images that have their limitations at further adjustment. You can now render your SU model in LO 2 in vector or hybrid rendering options which will give spectacularly better export results than in LO 1 (Beta).

AFAIK (though I'm not sure), on the Mac you have better support of pdf format and (maybe?) you can even export vector based pdf's (someone please, confirm if so)

[cmd]

Yes.... when exporting out to pdf, what ever is vector on the design sheet will become vector in the pdf. What ever is raster on the design sheet will become raster in the pdf. This is true for both PC and Mac versions

Also, you can control the quality of your raster when exporting with in the Document Setup area.
see http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=11577

Cheers,
CMD

[DavidBoulder]

If you want to do some vector post processing on Layout Files bringing PDF into Adobe Illustrator is a great option. You can turn things on or off, change line style, added or change text.

You can also turn around and save the Illustrator files back as dwg file. CS3 and CS4 support importing and exporting to scale, so you can bring your exported dwg back to full scale.

Illustrator can also be used to bring PDF's into SketchUp as vector files using same technique. PDF opened, saved as dwg, and then imported into SketchUp.