Working drawing detail elev from SU scene

honoluludesktop

I have been opening SU.skp with 2CD Pro bata to prepare production documents detail drawings from SU scenes. For example, in the creation of interior elevations of a room, within a SU model:

Within the living room of a residential SU model, are created 4, parallel projected (flat 2d views), of scenes titled Lvrm_Elev_A, Lvrm_Elev_B, Lvrm_Elev_C, and Lvrm_Elev_D.
The SU file is saved as House.skp, then opened with 2CD.
The 2CD window opens including (5) tabs that refer to a model view, and 4 paper space views (same names as above) of each SU scene.
A worksheet is added to the set, say "A-5 Interior Elevations", and the 4 paper spaces views are combined on this sheet in a manner suitable for a production drawing layout.
The worksheet then is edited, annotated, and dimensioned as a production drawing.

Sounds like combining SU with production CAD in a seamless manner. Another way of working with the program, is to insert the SU.skp into a open worksheet. Changes to the original SU.skp will be reflected in 2CD.

Has someone worked with multiple 2d interior elevations in SU scenes. What are the consideration to doing so, and problems if any?
Any ideas of the kind of layer management tool that may need to be developed to aid building 2D scenes?

Anssi

I use AutoCad to prepare my 2D construction documents. I made a SU template with section planes and corresponding views in place to get the plan and interior elevations.

Anssi

honoluludesktop

Hi Anssi, How do you get individual sections, and 2d scenes (plans, interior or exterrior elevations) from SU to ACAD?

linea

honolulu

This is a very worthwhile topic, although it's been raised many times, it would be good to pound it out once and for all. I'm keen to streamline this process too. I'd be interested to hear how others deal with this. Hopefully with the the advent of DoubleCAD and it's ability to open an Su model, a better SU/cad handshake can be developed.

Anssi

@honoluludesktop said:

Hi Anssi, How do you get individual sections, and 2d scenes (plans, interior or exterrior elevations) from SU to ACAD?

I export 2D DWGs. I tried Didier's PageExIm.rb, but it messed with the section planes, so I found it good only for exterior elevations.

Anssi

wmanning

I love threads like this. It's good to see how people work, but more importantly it would be great to hear how you want it to work, and how best we can streamline your workflow. Things like section support, partial load Xrefs for scenes, and other items are on our radar screen already.

Thanks,
William

wbarch

Have you guys looked at the basecamp videos by Mitchel Stangl?

(http://sites.google.com/site/3dbasecamp2008/)

Seems like this has come the closest (that I've found so far) toward describing a workflow in ACAD.

The DoubleCAD option looks interesting too though - It would be interesting to post a sample working drawing page showing what can be created with SU and DoubleCAD. In my own experience with ACAD, I've ended up importing the SU model via plug-in and then drawing over it again in ACAD to get clean lines.

I would suspect the layer structure in SU should mirror something akin to Revit, e.g. objects are put on layer categories like "walls, doors, windows, annotations, structural framing, etc"

wb

3rd stone

What is 2CD PRO?
Use the section plane and scene,don't forget to active cut and update scene.

watkins

Dear William,

I think Forum members would appreciate a video tutorial showing how DoubleCAD can be used with Sketchup, and specifically the work flow from 3D model to 2D drawings. There could be more than one video showing different aspects of the work flow.

The work would not be wasted as the videos could then be posted on YouTube, thus reaching a wider audience.

Kind regards,
Bob

honoluludesktop

2CD Pro beta is "DoubleCad XT Pro" that I am evaluating. It is a Cad program that interfaces with SU in two ways. One way is to insert a SU.skp into a 2CD production worksheet as a xref. This procedure allows changes to the model by SU to be updated in the 2CD xref. Information regarding SU scenes is not involved in this process.

The other process 2CD offers is to directly open a SU.skp, which creates a worksheet for each SU scene. The scene's viewports can be cut, paste, and edited into a production worksheet. At present, in this process, the revisions in the SU.skp scenes is not updated in 2CD.

Presently, you have two choices: update 2CD database without SU scenes, or no update to 2CD database with SU scenes.

The value of the program is to provide a way to access a SU model by another Cad program, in the manner that production drawings. In addition to many other formats, 2CD can read/write SU files, and read/write ACad files. My purpose for posting here was to get comments from Architects, and other SU users regarding design to production drawing work flow, to help my evaluation.

Anssi, or others, have you tried to use a "aligned", "parallel projected", scenes, with selected layers off, as interior elevations?

linea

William, Honolulu
It would be good to see a video that shows the SU > DoubleCAD proposed best practice. And then a "but this is what you can do" video for the pro version. I think I have a pretty good SU > AutoCAD/ProgeCAD workflow but I'm hoping DoubleCAD has some tricks up it's sleeves.

Is 2CDpro a public beta? If so I'll take a look.

jon

wmanning

Thanks for the feedback guys. We are working on a video for SketchUp to DoubleCAD and hope to show a bit of the workflow.

With the free product just released we have a few plusses and minuses. The negatives are that when we bring in the views we didn't respect hidden line or Parallel Projection view styles, so for each viewport they need to be converted (and we'll fix this asap -- as to whether it is fixed in the Pro v1.0 release coming up I don't yet know). The positives are that we create a view and a paperspace with a view for each scene and we do respect the layer visibility by scene (as opposed to the DWG or DXF exports I bring into AutoCAD).

With the Pro version we will be adding the ability to Xref a .skp file, and we have additional features that create associative standard views, hatched sectional views, and more. What we don't have today is an integration of the two methods, so that an individual scene could be updated in SU and updated in DoubleCAD, and our Xrefs could still be made much more robust.

The Pro version is not currently a public beta. It is nearing release (for the v1.0 at least), but if you are interested in beta participation, not just evaluation, let me know and I can talk to the product manager. (wmanning @ imsidesign.com)

Now, back to the video...

-- William

utiler

Thanks William and everyone. I am very interested in this SU/DoubleCAD collaboration; it is what I have wondered [and been frustrated with!!!] for some time....
Downloading XT for a look.....

wmanning

Been so busy I forgot we were going to create a video or two on the workflow for this thread. Dropped the ball, sorry... I'll get on this, as the one we have on our web site doesn't go into too much depth. But you can see that one here if you like: http://downloads.imsidesign.com/Flash/DoubleCADFlash/Import-From-Sketchup-800-600/Import-From-Sketchup-800-600.htm

William