Painful PDF export

lee3001 · 20 Oct 2010, 20:39

I have an increasingly large model that will be used as basis for line drawings to be touched up in Illustrator.

The model now has 3M lines and 0.5M faces, and it is almost done. It is a very modular thing so almost all of it is component instances.

Now, when exporting views to PDF it takes ages for it to handle. Sometimes it wont finish after an hour and by that time my computer fan is running at 100db, and I worry to do permanent damage to my tired precious laptop.

So I was wondering, are there workarounds to getting a PDF out of Sketchup? And I mean a vector PDF, not bitmap.

I would be very happy to get any tips for a better approach. How do you do it?

Krisidious · 21 Oct 2010, 02:45

Adobe accepts DWG files...

lee3001 · 21 Oct 2010, 09:47

The problem is that if I export a 3d dwg, it will only open in top view in Illustrator. Exporting a 2D dwg is just as painful as exporting a PDF, probably because Sketchup has to translate all that 3d data into a 2d representation, meaning it has to explode all components and stuff, though I am just guessing.

Is there perhaps a possibility of some program accepting a skp file and being faster than Sketchup to make a PDF from a view. I wonder if a program like Vectorworks might be faster?

Gaieus · 21 Oct 2010, 09:54

Hi Lee,

I guess you have SU Pro (if I remember correctly, pdf export is only possible with the pro version).

Have you tried to export from LayOut then? It has some different exporting algorithm as far as I know and you could be more lucky with that. Vector and hybrid rendering modes export edges as vectors.

jhauswirth · 21 Oct 2010, 15:08

@gaieus said:

Hi Lee,
Have you tried to export from LayOut then? It has some different exporting algorithm as far as I know and you could be more lucky with that. Vector and hybrid rendering modes export edges as vectors.

Pure vector from LO would be the same as PDF from SU. Hybrid from LO may be faster since
it doesn't have to create vector faces.