Public Beta for Obj, SolidWorks, STEP, and FBX importers

ashraf

With the public beta we were looking for two main things:

1- Problematic models that the importer fails to import
2- Enactment suggestions

In the release coming after the public beta we will only address the import problems which were reported, the percentage of the problematic models compared to the number of installations was really low, and we are working on fixing those importing problems before the release.

Regarding enchantments, most of the requested enhancements will be available in the next minor releases which will be available free for all users (usually we provide 2 minor releases)

It is understandable that some users will not want to use the plugins until it meets their own requirements, the plugins will always support a trial license.

Encasements coming in the next minor release will include:

Upgrading FBX to 2011 (current FBX version in the plugin is 2010.2).
A new unit system that automatically scales imported models to SketchUp units automatically.
Progress Bar, giving the user an indication about the progress of the import process

Best Regards,

Ashraf

Frederik

Thanks, for the heads up, Ashraf...

@ashraf said:

A new unit system that automatically scales imported models to SketchUp units automatically.

I assume you mean the units the user is currently using...

@ashraf said:

Progress Bar, giving the user an indication about the progress of the import process

This is great news...

I'm looking forward to see the new plugins...

ashraf

Thanks for the great testing and feedback from all the beta testers, the plugins were released today, and the work on the first update release to incorporate the feedback and suggestions we received had already started.

In this release SimLab added progress bar to inform the user that importers are working, added support for OBJ files with negative index values, and updated the plugins to work with SketchUp 8.

The plugins are now supported to work with SketchUp 8, 7.1 and 7

3dsketchupper

FBX import to sketchup failed? fbx was exported from Revit.
Revit to sketchup file size approx.20mg
One thing that we are interested with this plugin is to import revit textures into sketchup.
Just wondering if this will solve our problem. Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks

ashraf

The current plugin is capable of importing FBX files from Revit 2010.
Soon it will be update to included support for FBX files from Revit 2011.

Autodesk starting from Revit 2011 switched the material types used in FBX files exported from Revit, so instead of usual FBX materials it is using Autodesk internal description.
This is special for Revit 2011. We are investigating a solution for this.

Mra

Hi,

Is there a possibility that there can be an FBX plugin that exports out of SketchUp and replace the current default exporter?

The default FBX exporter by Google is actually a couple of years out of date and very old. I think current version is FBX 2011.3, wheraes SketchUP uses FBX 6.1! Thanks

ashraf

Sure we can do that,

We can add a new FBX exporter for SketchUp, this should be available soon.

Mra

Sounds good ashraf, thank you.

ashraf

Your request was fulfilled.

We have FBX 2011 and OBJ exporters ready for SketchUp 7, 7.1 and 8.
The plugins should work on Windows with the free and pro versions.

FBX exporter can be found at
http://www.simlab-soft.com/3d-plugins/FBX_Exporter_From_Sketchup-main.aspx

OBJ exporter can be found at
http://www.simlab-soft.com/3d-plugins/OBJ_Exporter_From_Sketchup-main.aspx

Cheers.

Ashraf

thomthom

Updates - sweet.

I submitted some reports of some models that took an extremely long time to import - some never seemed to complete. Any changes in this release that would address that?

ashraf

The update you are looking for, should be available in January. We invested time in handling instances in the SketchUp files, which can be found extensively in Revit models, this update should be ready in January.

The last note was about two new Exporters for (FBX and OBJ)

Those exporters can serve a user who wants to use SketchUp models in other applications that do not have native SketchUp import capabilities

thomthom

Oh - exporters - didn't notice that!

I'll wait for the January release of the importer.

Mra

Hi ashraf,

I have to thank you for the very quick response, truly appreciated. However I have to be honest. I have requested a trial licence for the FBX exporter but have noted a few pros and cons over the default FBX editor. I am importing straight into Maya.

Simlab Pros:

Imports Sketchup's scenes and successfully converts into Maya Cameras
Textures are saved into the FBX file
Handles materials much better than the default except there was an instance where one material was duplicated about 100 times

Default FBX Pros:

Groups objects as groups in Maya rather than using Maya locaters
Seems to preserve geometry better
Hidden geometry in Sketchup is completely discarded

Default and Simlab FBX Cons:

FBX 2011 supports instances but neither plugins seem to preserve this on import
No layers support

Currently I appreciate the dev work put into this but feel I cannot justify the price as I prefer the Geometry outputed by the default FBX converter even if it is an older version and has a few limitations. I think geometry preservation is a must, I found the same problem happened with the Sketchup to Maya converter too where all geo was triangulated. I post this in the best possible intentions.

ashraf

Thanks for the great feedback, We will work on addressing those issues in the next update.
The next update will have a better handling o instances.

thomthom

@ashraf said:

The next update will have a better handling o instances.

Yay!

Mra

I got an email today about an update, is there possibility to get a changelog? I'm still interested in the instances/components in FBX and the ability to not triangulate the mesh. Thanks.