OOF.

I think were going to have to give up on PDF and use an image of the screen instead.

However, that is a shame, because PDF format make much better printouts because of the increased resolution.

Hmmm...

Why don't you search for PDF and see if there are any threads about it.

I originally had a Tahoma font which created an error message when I loaded the PDF into Adobe. I switched to Times New Roman, and also checked: "Map Windows fonts to PDF base fonts".

I just switched the fonts to Arial and tried it with the check box checked and unchecked, but it didn't help.

Thanks for testing it Alan.

I added the one that works as well (test1.pdf) and the .SKP file to the original message.

I am just creating these with SketchUp 6.0 2D Export.

I am exporting a SketchUp model to PDF.

When I load the PDF in adobe it appears properly, but when I do anything in Adobe (e.g. zoom), the image turns to white and I can't see anything.

The drawing has text below the main drawing. If I remove the text before the export, then things seems to work OK. (I tried this with Adobe 8.1.0 and 8.1.2)

Has anyone had a similar problem?

test2.pdf is the one that fails
test2.pdf

test1.pdf is the one that works ok
test1.pdf

This is the SKP file:
pdf-problem.skp

I am having a problem with the PDF exporter. (I am adding another post about the problem. But I am downloading Adobe 8.1.2 first to see if the problem goes away.)

But I would like to search for the term PDF to see if there are other queries about it already.

When I search for PDF nothing is found.

I know that on another Forum I run I was able to change the search to allow 3 letter words, rather than a minimum of 4 letters. And/or I was able to add specific 3 letter words to be searched if I didn't want to allow all three letter words.

Can the SUC forum be changed to allow searches for 3-letter words?

You might want to check out IRender.

We have done quite a bit of work to integrate it with SketchUp by adding wizards to create lamps, light fixtures, mirrors, etc. This makes it easier to prepare a scene for rendering.

And the new IRender nXt versions adds default "Studio Lighting" which makes it easy to produce good renderings without having to add lights to the scene.

Check it out at: http://www.renderplus.com

Thanks for the comments.

The original tire model was 63 meters wide. I scaled it down about 10 to 1, but I should have been more careful about that. (A 20' tire is still too big.)

And I scratched my head about how to easily add some tread, but didn't come up with any ideas. ( )

Chrome 6 spoke Rim by fabz from Google 3D Warehouse. Rendered with IRender nXt - Studio lighting (no sun or added lights). Indirect lighting enabled. Edge lines enabled

12 rendering passes - 2 min 11 seconds

See: http://nxt.accurender.com/photos/sketchup/picture2108.aspx

See the thread about Spam on the "free" SketchUp Forum:

http://groups.google.com/group/SketchUp ... d0c7c4f70a

I wonder why the Google Group forums are unmoderated? There are definitely people
at SketchUp who "care" about SketchUp and care about the SketchUp
users. There are even people who read the forums and respond to
questions. Why aren't they moderators?

I always submit my "new" questions here in the SketchUp Community Forum:

But I watch the other two Forums (Google Groups) to see if there is
anything I can help with. And I make announcements of new software,
etc. on all three forums.

I was looking up the base camp earlier this week while I was thinking about how to get some sort of meeting going.

Here is what I read: http://aecnews.com/news/2006/08/16/1958.aspx

Has anyone heard any news about a base camp in the future

@unknownuser said:

SketchUp 3D Base Camp Drops Off the Radar for 2006

Posted on Wednesday, August 16, 2006 2:25 PM

The 2005 SketchUp 3D Base Camp won’t be returning for an encore in 2006.

In a letter today to Base Camp attendees, The Google SketchUp team said “It's not that we don't want to; we just don't have the resources to do it properly.” Given that SketchUp is now owned by a company that harvests money with almost as many zeros as its name suggests, one has to wonder what resources are lacking.

The apology continues:

BaseCamp was such a great experience last year that we were all looking forward to doing it again this fall. Getting the chance to meet everyone, and to have everyone meet each other, was our favorite part of the event. This doesn't mean that there won't be one next year—that's still very much a possibility.

The letter tries to explain what’s keeping the SketchUp team so busy it can’t throw another big party:

Currently, we're working on SketchUp 6 and Grizzly, which some of you might have seen previewed at AIA in Los Angeles in June. We're also trying our hardest to have both platforms available at the same time. Then there are the French, Spanish, Italian, German and Japanese versions of SketchUp 6 that we've got to have ready... Needless to say, we don't have much time to use the pool table in the break room anymore.

If you need a SketchUp 3D Base Camp fix, here’s a list of articles from our coverage last year:

@robmoors said:

I believe something like a conference already exists:

The Sketchup Basecamp

I have asked a few people whether SketchUp has user groups.

It may be that user groups are a thing of the past.

In the old days, we used to have user groups which met once a week or once a month over lunch or dinner and a member or guest would giv a presentation about something of interest to the group.

Perhaps, since the internet has taken over the world, user groups have died off.

Does anyone still go to user groups and/or does anyone participate in a user group? (SketchUp or other software/hardware)

If user groups are now longer in the vogue how about a user conference - once a year of so?

The new, powerful and exciting rendering engine - nXt - is ready for you to test in IRender nXt.

In addition to numerous, powerful new features and improvements, nXt has two major features which are worth special note:

1. Lighting Presets

By using HDRI lighting models, IRender nXt can produce very good renderings without adding any lights to your model.

This model from the 3D warehouse was rendered using the nXt Studio lighting defaults in just 5 minutes.

The materials in the 3D Warehouse model were marked as reflective, but the lighting effects were created from the default lighting.

(Model from: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=df511edf1ad43619de1171f185fa544c&hl=en Lock Machine by Jon)

See: http://wiki.renderplus.com/index.php?title=IRender_nXt_Samples for more examples.

2. Indirect Lighting

The nXt engine automatically incorporates the effects of indirect lighting without the need for Radiosity or other special processing.

This model was rendered with the HDRI illumination and indirect lighting.

(This was rendered with 50 lighting passes in 20 minutes)

Downloads:
You can download the Beta test version - free without watermarks during the Beta test period - from the Render Plus Site: http://forums.renderplus.com/forumdisplay.php?f=25

More Information

See: http://wiki.renderplus.com/index.php?title=IRender_nXt

and also the nXt forum: http://nxt.accurender.com/

Thanks for helping me find the SKP model.

I rendered it with the new IRender nXt engine, using HDRI illumination rather than the sun, and indirect lighting effects.

I tried this external, page2rss feeder.

It wasn't as good as a real RSS feed, and in fact was practically worthless.

Can we add an RSS feed to the forum?

RpTools, a SketchUp add-on, has a Wizard to let you select a component or other geometry,
see its current sizes, enter the desired sizes, and scale it.

See: http://forums.renderplus.com/wiki/index.php?title=RpTools#Stretch_Wizard

We have a routine which loads a .SKP file into the model definitions and then reads the faces from the component. However, it does not read the normal properly the first time.

After we do something else in SketchUp, between loading the component and trying to read it, then we can read the normals properly.

I seem to remember that there is a commend to tell SketchUp to "clean up the drawing" after you have changed if (for instance adding a component or instance) which will cause SketchUp to calculate the smoothed normals and report them properly. But I cannot remember for find the command.

Does anyone remember how to tell SketchUp to report the normals properly.

(I do not want to re-smooth the faces, the smoothed faces are already stored in the component .SKP file properly)

(I can provide a sample RUBY file to demonstrate this if necessary.)

We will look at this again, but I believe the group/component/entity will report its own material and not the "Color by Layer" material.

But we will try it. It would be a shame to miss the obvious answer.

TextureHelper lets us save copies of the texture file for the layer, but neither Texture Helper of UVQHelper seem to let us access the texture size.

@unknownuser said:

What's wrong with this agonizing approach:

• create an "array entry" for every layer
• For every group/component/entity...
• determine if it has any material associated with it
• if so, for it's layer "array entry", add the material to it as a subarray
  When done, you have an array of layers, and each layer records the materials in it.

From the first post, I thought I was missing the obvious. This is the obvious approach.

Since materials don't have layers, but objects have both materials and layers, you just have to run the objects and make your own list. From my perspective, no big deal - it's just not a quick call to any singe method to get it done.

Todd

Shoot!

This was a good idea TIG, but the .mtl file does not contain the texture size information.

@unknownuser said:

Alias OBJ Material File

Exported from SketchUp, (c) 2000-2006 Google, Inc.

newmtl Layer0
Ka 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
Kd 1.000000 0.000000 0.000000
Ks 0.330000 0.330000 0.330000
map_Kd test4/Layer0.jpg

Kd is the color, but when I change the texture size and export it again, nothing in the file changes to match it.

I guess we'll have to write our own exporter...

@tig said:

I wrote this work around a while ago... It does it by making an obj export of the model set 'material by layer' temporarily, and then using its mtl file to get the layers and colours... that's as good as it gets... You could use the data from the temp file rather than write a csv ? You could even export it all to a temp folder and delete that at the end if required ?

We are going to write an Exporter, but that has the disadvantage of only working with the Professional version of SketchUp.

We can write an external program using SKP_Reader, but that will require that the user save the current model before rendering it.

We would like to get this information from the current model, in the free version, without saving the model. (If possible)

@unknownuser said:

Al, since you can get to the data you need via the SDK, write a C/C++ extension that returns the data to Ruby.

Todd