Batch import raster images

Pout

Is it possible in layout to automatically import a set of raster images and put each of the images in the set on a new page?

bjanzen

Sorta, through SketchUp. Read http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=25189&p=216312&hilit=template+scene+page#p216312 and let me know if it's not clear.

We've also blogged some about this:

Connecting SketchUp Scenes to LayOut Templates

Follow the SketchUpdate blog for SketchUp news, modeling tips and tricks, user stories and more.

(sketchupdate.blogspot.com)

b

danbig

Another approach may be to try the following:

Create a LayOut template, with the desired number of pages, with one raster image linked on each page. Have a different raster file per page, and put all the images in the same folder.

Create a new LayOut document using the template, and then overwrite the linked raster images with your batch of images for the document.

This would be more work than creating the document manually, but may save time if this is a process you plan to do many times over.

Pout

bjanzen,

Thx for the answer but I create the images for a reason. (Being: SU not keeping diff. in materials between Scenes and layout not triggering Scene observer)
So the use of scenes (untill this is solved) is not possible.

danbig,

Thx, i'll see if I can get further with this. The problem is that the amount of images differs each time.
As i understand your approach:
Make a template with 1 image on each page, that image is in a directory
Rename the images that are needed to the template images and put them in the same directory as the template images (thus overwriting them)
Et voila. (untested)

As stated the problem is i do not know the exact amount of images. I'll see if i can find a workarround for that.

DavidBoulder

If your comfortable working with an XML file you can try this. Of course you can also really mess things up, so work on a copy.

Rename your file.layout to file.zip. When you open the zip files you will see a series of directories and XML files. Back when I used to do this (in ver 1.0) I think things were a little simpler. I see more XML files than I remember, and the code is more complex in some areas. There are a few top level xmls, and then under a "pages" directory" is an xml for every page.

Here is a sample object from a page.


         <e;image id="id1367">
            <e;placedFileReference>
              <e;rectangleBase height="3.531425" width="4.565884" x="1.876357" y="1.966594">
                <e;graphicEntity shouldFill="0" shouldStroke="0"/>
              </e;rectangleBase>
              <e;clipMask>
                <e;rectangle id="id1368" rounding="0" shape="0">
                  <e;rectangleBase height="2.561111" width="2.819996" x="2.801096" y="2.47079">
                    <e;graphicEntity isClipMask="1" shouldFill="0" strokeCapStyle="1" strokeJoinStyle="1" strokeWidth="0.2"/>
                  </e;rectangleBase>
                </e;rectangle>
              </e;clipMask>
            </e;placedFileReference>
            <r;imageFileReference r;id="id1361"/>
          </e;image>

I had even thought at one point of using mail merge or Excel to generate XML flies for Layout pages. In theory you could right a custom application to create a Layout file, or at least the XML to be used in a file. Hmm, maybe a nice SU ruby script.

So you can create new content, but also tons of nice things you could do with a find and replace in the text editor. Do all of you arrows look to big? Find endArrowSize="5" and change it to endArrowSize="3"

Pout

David,

Thx, this seems like a nice path to follow!

Pout

Hey David,

Is there any additional information available on the XML structure used?

regards

DavidBoulder

@pout said:

Hey David,

Is there any additional information available on the XML structure used?

regards

Sorry, I must have missed this reply, also sorry, I don't have a good source on documentation for this, but if you work on a copy of your files so there is nothing to mess up, you may have good luck searching the text file for an object you have to find how it is referenced in the code.