Export 2d House Plans
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I have drawn some house plans in SU and am trying to export them to a PNG file that I can incorporate into a PDF document. The problem is SU exports exactly what it sees on the screen. Even though it is a simple line drawing, many of the lines are thickened to several pixels wide and reduced to a light grey colour instead of being black, no matter what zoom level I use. It does not matter whether I use perspective or parallel projection.
Is there any plugin that allows a line drawing to be exported as exactly that please? ie. so that all of the lines are single-pixel wide and black (with anti-aliasing on the curves)?
The other problem I have is aligning the view. Because at some stage I have obviously changed the axes, when I select a surface and right click and choose Align View, it goes to an overhead view but rotates the image to a 45 degree angle.
What I would like is something that would export the image so it is aligned with the current axes.
I realise that I can copy and paste the model into a new model to fix the axes problem, but that is a pain, given that I will usually have started from a Get more Imagery and aligned the drawing to the imagery. In that case it will always be skewed with respect to the original axes.
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You can rotate a plan view [search for my tool in the Plugins Index] then save that to a new Scene-tab...
Ensure your Style settings give profile/line thicknesses etc as you might prefer.
Export the PNG image at a very large pixel size, with no anti-aliasing [use 'Options' to preset this] - the edges will then remain a few pixels wide which is thinner in proportion the the overall size...
Then you can scale down/anti-alias the image in Gimp or PhotoShop etc if desired and then use then in other assembly apps... -
Peter, I think the problem is you are using a raster image to create your PDF file. Here are some examples for you. First, "Plan Screen" is a PDF from a view sized PNG export. Next, "Plan 3K" is a PDF from a 3000 pixel wide export. Not very nice and I expect similar to what you're getting. I made them by creating PDFs from files in Acrobat Pro. What you need, though, is vector lines instead of raster lines. You probably want something that looks like "Plan from LO" which was made by inserting the plan from SketchUp into LayOut and rendering it as Vector. If this is the sort of thing you need, it would be worth your while to switch to the Pro version of SketchUp. If you aren't going to do that, you'll need an application to create vector lines from your SketchUp file. Perhaps that means going through a CAD application although there are applications that will convert raster line work to Vector.
Out of curiosity, when you are creating your PDF files, do you need the plan to be at any specific scale? If so, how are you achieving that now. Doing it in LayOut is simple and fast.
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There is a free cad software product from Dassault called DraftSight. If you export from SketchUp to it as a dxf/dwg file, it will allow you to export as a pdf file.
Would this work for you versus a png file to pdf? http://www.3ds.com/products/draftsight/download-draftsight/ -
All I am doing is creating a typical floor plan layout of our building (apartment block) to include in a fire evacuation plan I am creating. So it is just a one-off. The page with the diagram on it will be A4 with the drawing probably occupying about half of the page.
The reason I was thinking of going via PNG was because I was intending to type the room names (Lounge, Kitchen etc) in Photoshop or similar. I find Sketchup's text processing to be annoying. The normal text cannot be "glued" in place. It keeps changing position to face the camera and changes size relative to the model as you zoom. 3D text is no good because it gives a double outline.
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Well, LayOut would make this all quite simple.
I'm not sure what you mean by 3D Text giving double outlines. I don't see that when I use 3D Text. You can make that text flat if you wish by unticking the Extrude box.
There's nothing you can do to change the fact that a PNG is a raster image and what you need for the crisp lines you're after is vector. If you get a converter as was mentioned, you should be able to make the vector lines from the PNG.
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What I mean is that the 3D text is not single lines but double lines, filled or not, extruded or not.
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I've not seen that except with fonts that are open to begin with. Could you post an example?
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If you mean it has edges, all ttf fonts will become 3d forms with some thickness, even 'stick' fonts.
If they are colored black the edges 'vanish'.
If you are using a Style with heavy profiles or extensions, the edges can look messy.
To fix that hide all edges.
Do this by editing the text's container and selecting all edges [either with a selection-tool or using the wireframe view-mode], Entity Info > hidden checked...OR just try 2dTools Text tool that does all of this for you and allows text/color/size/font etc to be set and edited later if desired... The only 'different' thing to remember is to use a
\nin the text-string to show any newlines... -
Could I suggest TIG's 2d Tools. One of the tools is 2dText. It is not extruded. As default it is placed slightly above the surface. Or, is this not the problem?
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@unknownuser said:
I missed this. Where is this mentioned? Like Vect
I missed this. Where is this mentioned? Like VectorMagic?
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In my first post in the thread.
@dave r said:
If this is the sort of thing you need, it would be worth your while to switch to the Pro version of SketchUp. If you aren't going to do that, you'll need an application to create vector lines from your SketchUp file. Perhaps that means going through a CAD application although there are applications that will convert raster line work to Vector.
Yes, Vector Magic. Also http://wintopo.com/ and probably others.
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Oh, I see. Thanks.
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Thanks for all the suggestions.
I ended up using CorelDraw Essentials X5 which I discovered was pre-installed on my (Aldi) laptop. It worked well. I was able to Copy in Corel and Paste-Special in Word, which is where I actually wanted the data to end up. Even re-sizing in Word still retained crisp lines without any anti-aliasing etc.
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