Posts made by autarchos

Sorry - I'm on Windows 10. Sketchup Pro 2019.3

Thanks, Dave. Unfortunately, I don't use layout, so can't speak to that. Our workflow goes from Sketchup to Adobe Illustrator via PDF.

bumping this post. it's had 2,592 views and not a single response.

can someone confirm this bug? it would be nice if a sketchup staff member could look at this and fix it please. i just installed the latest release and this problem has not been addressed. this is preventing my company from upgrading to sketchup 2019, as this makes our standard graphic workflow unusable.

Can someone confirm whether this is a bug or if there's something going on with my model that I'm not catching? I have relied on sketchup to export scaled pdfs for my graphic workflow for the past 10 years, so i'm not new to this process.

The attached graphic shows a 10'x10'x10' cube exported from both SU 2018 and SU 2019. I have exported to PDF at a scale of 1"=10' and opened the pdfs in Illustrator as I usually do. The isometric cube exported from 2018 has sides that measure 1" as they should. The isometric cube exported from 2019 has sides that measure 0.8165". The right view cube exported from 2019 measures 1"x1", as it should. i have checked and rechecked my settings before exporting the isometric cube in 2019, but I still end up with this improperly scaled geometry.

Can anyone confirm whether this is a bug?

Thanks,
Pete

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I'd like to buy an FBX importer. I know of FluidImporter and SimLab. Are there any others? Does anyone have recommendations on which is more reliable, can handle bigger files, etc? I'm specifically interested in preserving geometry instances from Blender, as well. (Will they import as components?)

Thanks for your thoughts!

+1 on this and with kickstarter! In addition to 3D, I would also find a simple 2d fillet tool extremely useful, as most of my roadway drawings require this frequently. One that preserves the fillet as an arc with an adjustable segment count is key, and currently doesn't exist to my knowledge.

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Thanks for your reply, Dave.

You're right - the screenshots are from SU2015, but the same principle applies as it relates to 2017 - except of course there's no option to turn off HA in 2017. You actually helped me in 2015 to figure out that I needed to turn off HA in order to avoid the fragmentation, so I pulled the image from the prior post.

I will try to reinstall SU2017 as admin, but fairly certain that isn't the issue... the same thing happens on my personal computer as well where I only have an admin account.

The issue occurs when geometry becomes distant from the camera. If I export the same model from two different views, the problem wouldn't occur closeup (or at least fragmentation is so minimal, I can work with it). If the model is far enough from the camera, however, high fragmentation occurs. I assume it's because the flattened geometry is below a certain size threshold for the precision available with the OpenGL setting. Additionally, the issue is not dependent on the width of the export. I have tried setting PDF width at 10", 20", and 100" and each results in fragemented geometry.

It's a real quandry...

Friends - please help!

Sketchup 2017 runs fast and smooth on my workstation. I appreciate the graphics performance upgrades versus 2016; however, since I can no longer disable hardware acceleration, my graphics workflow, along with that of dozens of other people at my company is no longer possible.

See the attached image for reference. My workflow depends on exporting PDFs and then rendering them in Illustrator with all vector geometry intact. Previously I had to disable hardware acceleration and choose an OpenGL setting with "High Precision". On export of the PDF, all geometry would be maintained. Using hardware acceleration to export PDFs (from Sketchup 8 to 2017) does not allow a high precision setting, and as you can see, at smaller scales, complex geometry becomes fragmented and totally unusable. Geometry tend to fragment more when exported geometry is relatively small.

Is there something I'm missing? Can someone suggest a workaround for this within Sketchup 2017? Is there a way to disable HA manually? Is there a way to get a more precise export setting? I'm using a very capable Quadro K4000, and have the most recent driver installed - I don't think it's a graphic card issue.

If there's nothing I'm missing here, I would very much appreciate if the Sketchup team could put out a fix for this involving either more precise settings at PDF export, or re-enabling users to turn of HA.

Thanks for your thoughts!
Pete

Hi - I'm not sure why the texture is not affected by shading in the same way, but I can offer a trick that may help overcome your shading issue with the non-textured material.

If you turn on 'use sun for shading' and adjust the "light" value to 0 and "dark" value to 75, you will effectively turn of shading and see only the diffuse color - or the exact rgb that you are using. You could then composite this with an export of only shadows/shading in post to have greater control over the palette.

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The Joint push pull extension is also a great way to add thickness.

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I've never found a way to make vray toon very controllable. It's pretty simplistic honestly. I think you're better off exporting your geometry as scaled PDF, generating faces with appropriate stroke thickness in adobe illustrator, and then overlaying your shadow and AO pass, setting your blend mode to multiply.

John - I use a similar workflow. I work with multiple people at my company to produce graphics, and our monitors tend to vary in size. So documenting and maintaining the exact dimensions of PDF exports is critical to allowing multiple people to work on files.

We use Eneroth's "Resize Viewport" extension to ensure that our PDF exports all have the exact same dimensions as one another, and that they match the dimensions of the ambient occlusion pass that we overlay in Illustrator. It's a simple tool, but we couldn't work without it! No trial and error needed with this method.

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Dave - YOU ARE A GENIUS!

Thank you a million times for this. I've been struggling with it for a few years now, and that was the solution. I matched the Open GL Settings in SU2015 from SU8, and that did the trick. The export times and viewport are a little slower, but it makes the workflow much more efficient in the long run. See below for the comparison. Still have some experimenting to do to figure out how to optimimze the Open GL for performance and export quality, but overall it's a success.

Thanks!

Pete

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In SU versions later than SU 8, PDF export does not work properly. Specifically, once polygons in the viewport get below a certain size or angle facing the camera, they disappear. See the attached image. It seems to happen with curved geometry or organic forms. It also seems to occur more with geometry that is farther from the camera (and therefore smaller when converted to 2D PDF). It does occur on the same geometry when it is closer to the camera, but to a lesser degree. It does not occur with more orthogonal geometry, such as simple building facades.

I have tried exporting PDFs at a variety of sizes (from 5" to 100"), but the result is always the same fragmented geometry.

This issue occured in SU 2014 and now in SU 2015. I have not used SU 2013.

As a workaround, I have been saving down all of my models to SU 8 and exporting the geometry to pdf through that since I still have an SU 8 Pro license. It's quite a pain, though, as it adds a lot of extra time to my workflow and to projects.

Anyone else experience this? Anyone have a workaround other than using SU 8?

I hope that this bug can be addressed and fixed quickly. I assume that it will be easy to diagnose, since this functionality worked perfectly in previous versions of SU. I would definitely appreciate help on this, as it creates a big bottleneck in company projects. I am the only one who still has SU 8 and have to export PDFs for coworkers who can't otherwise do it.

Thank you, and please let me know if I can help in any way!

Pete

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hey dave, give the guy a break. he asked an innocent question, and there's no need for your holier than thou attitude.

shift+click does not finish here in SU8 Windows...

also having a hard time getting ivy to grow with successive clicks, sometimes it appears, sometimes it disappears, sometimes it grows "inside" boxes, usually doesn't grow past two or three clicks.

nevertheless, the plugin is looking great and keep up the fantastic work!

thanks for your help, gaieus!

i ended up also submitting a bug report and heard the same. in case others have this problem, here is the reply, including a workaround:

"We're aware of this problem, and our engineers
are currently investigating. We hope to have this resolved in the near
future. Currently the only workaround for this issue is to go to Window >
Model Info > Geo-location and choose "Clear Location" to remove the
existing georeference before trying to add a second geo-located image.
This must be done between each image inserted as the limitation is with
the existing geo-location information."

ah, yes, sorry (on windows as i typed)

the problem occurs in both Mac and Windows - each are the latest version of SU (8 M1).

'glad' to hear it's not necessarily a user specific error on my part... a bug introduced with the maintenance release?

edit: if you could move it to Bug Reports i'd be grateful.

thanks, gaieus!

Has anyone else come upon this problem? - I'm using SU 8.0.4811 - (didn't have an issue in previous SU versions)

Here's the break-down:

1. Open a new file
2. 'Add Location'
3. Attempt to add another piece of adjacent terrain
4. Add Location 'pop-up' in SU appears, but remains white (as if loading). I have waited for hours thinking it something might happen, but nothing.

• This occurs on both Mac and Windows sides of my computer.
• I have removed all plug-ins from the plug-ins folder, in case of some conflict, but the problem still occurs
• I have also tried at different scales and locations, with no success.
• Opening another new file always 'resets' the problem, but still, I can only import one piece of terrain

Sorry if this has already been identified elsewhere...

Any thoughts?

scaling textures for vray is done with the native texture scaling in SU. just right click the face with your material, choose 'texture' and then scale away. or better yet, in the SU material dialogue, adjust the exact measurements of the jpg image.

you can change the displacement parameters in the material to determine grass 'length.'

i suggest searching for related questions at http://forum.asgvis.com as the topic has been covered numerous times and in more depth than i have here. that's the best place to get answers to your vray related questions.