I'd love to do my renderings in SketchUp with V-ray. Atm I insert the model into Lumion and add realistic 3D trees there (Not Lumion trees). The tree models look good in SketchUp, but after a few dozen trees the polygon count becomes too high for SketchUp, while Lumion can handle hundreds or thousands.

Is there any trick to have e.g. components that look basic in SketchUp, but are rendered as detailed 3D models by V-Ray?

That is very clever! So I turn the surface and drape lines into a component, copy them, scale up e.g. 100X, drape, and the original components will get the cut lines, without having to downscale anything.

When draping lines on a surface, e.g. to assign materials (grass, asphalt etc) I tend to get a lot of problems where lines are not draped properly, especially if the terrain is somewhat complex - even if the lines are perfectly connected all the way.

If I remember correctly, this is largely caused by Sketchup being unhappy when triangles or line segments are too small. These tiny segments are not created, and the two surfaces remain connected. (anyone know what the minimum length is before you get problems btw?)

So I was wondering, is there any progress on this issue? Any good plugins or other solutions that can solve this issue?

Any pro-tips on working with huge models without slowing SketchUp down? (e.g model og small village with surrounding countryside)
Obviously, putting detailed objects or distant terrain on layers which can be switched off.
Anything else? Any plugins that help?

(No experience with ruby) I'm trying to alter this to rotate around component base instead of center.
It seems I just need to change this line:

pt = e.bounds.center

Can anyone help me find out what I need to write to make the component center its point of rotation?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Key rotate uses component center, not component base to rotate.
Also, I don't know how to open and edit plugin codes - is it hard to learn?

EDIT: I managed to change the rotation, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to change the point of rotation from group/component center to its base.

Apparently need to rewrite this line:
pt = e.bounds.center

My colleague who uses SU 2018 needed to generate some complex shapes, but was unable to do so with JointPushPull as it for some reason lacked the option to enable or disable "project the shape on a plane" (flatten the new face of the extruded surface). Also, the option to generate as group was gone. All others settings were seemingly in place, even though it looked a bit different.
After installing 2017 like I use, JointPushPull worked fine. Did she install wrong version of the plugin, is SU 2018 the problem, or am I missing something?

Background: I model botanically accurate trees in SketchUp (I've given up SpeedTree) for archviz.
Once I've created a bunch of branches, I need to place them along the tree trunk quickly and precisely, often rotating them a bit to avoid much overlap with other branches. This would be much quicker using keys, e.g numpad keys. Besides, picking the right axis for rotation is really hard, as it is hidden inside the tree trunk.

Ideally, I would love to find a plugin which lets me do the following:
Rotate selected component along Axis Z from component base in incremental steps of X degree using keyboard only.

I've found one plugin which seems to do the job, which seems a bit clunky - unfortunately I have to select the plugin window for each separate component. It is not "perfectly integrated".
https://sketchucation.com/plugin/826-jf-moveit

Any other suggestions or workarounds would be greatly appreciated.

In my experience the components automatically fall right into place if I right-click the original component, pick reload and select the new file - no need to move in place. (Assuming I used the same method to export it)

I regularly work with huge 3D models of large areas, and even my supercomputer becomes rather slow after a while, even for minor task, despite optimization. Recently I discovered that I could make parts of the terrain a separate component, right click-> save the component as a different file, edit it very quickly then reload it in the original file, automatically in the right location. Is this common practice? Any tips or pitfalls i should be aware of? Is this the way to make 3D models of areas that are larger than what SketchUp handles easily?

Also, if so: do you prefer to create custom ad-hoc component which are exploded after edits are complete and reloaded, or create smaller parcels which are remain separate components throughout?

Could it also be a good way to work with design options? Layers of course work well too, but they do contribute to making the file larger, slower to save/load (and edit?), and can be tricky to keep track of.

How strange! At least I am content that whatever was wrong isn't an easy fix, so I can put my mind at ease and to this the hard way through Civil 3D, then convert to .dwg and into SketchUp.
Thank you!

@filibis said:

@intelcoreduo said:

I've downloaded free high-res 0,25m accurate terrain data for Bergen, Norway (or anywhere else)

May i ask from where did you get/download that free high-res data? I can't seem to find anything higher then ~30m accuracy.

@intelcoreduo said:

but SketchUp will crash during the import, even when the file is tiny (small area, and .dem file is just a few kb)

I don't know why it crashes but if you could share the .dem , i can have a look.

Sure, I use this website:
https://hoydedata.no/LaserInnsyn/
(Only covers Norway though) 0,25m accuracy in many cities and other areas. Let me know if you need help in getting the download settings right.

The DEM file is attached

dtm.rar

I'm using the latest SketchUp pro, and recently discovered the power of GIS. I've downloaded free high-res 0,25m accurate terrain data for Bergen, Norway (or anywhere else) but SketchUp will crash during the import, even when the file is tiny (small area, and .dem file is just a few kb)
At the moment I've managed to import the data by importing it to AutoCAD Civil 3D then converting to a surface, moving to 0,0, exploding to meshes and saving as .dwg.

Perhaps the coordinates are the problem, SketchUp will not accept my Autocad files unless I move them close to origo. Not sure how I can delete coordinates of a .dem file.

Any ideas?

Just to explain more clearly:
I made an aspen tree with aspen "leaf" level 3 components grouped together inside a level 2 "branch" component grouped together inside a level 1 "tree" component.

Then I used the aspen tree component to make a birch tree in a new file. I replaced the Aspen leaf .tif texture with birch leaf .tif, and changed the branch shapes a bit.

Then I make a new landscape file and insert the birch tree. Later I insert the aspen tree. However the Aspen leaf.tif texture is now replaced with the birch leaf .tif texture. It seems SketchUp remembers that the leaf level 3 component was the same.
Changing the components and sub-component name before importing makes no difference. The only thing that helps is exploding the leaf component.

This would be a nice solution, except the tree is much more complex than explained above, with tons of different level 3 leaf components, which are not easy to find. Also I modeled a handful of trees before discovering this problem. So, either a solution to the issue of help figuring out the logic behind this problem would be greatly appreciated.

I've modeled a tree with components within components. Then I used this tree to create a second, different tree where I alter the geometry and replace the textures.

However, when I move both trees into the same file then one of them gets the textures from the other. It seems like some of the components have the same ID tag somehow and get replaced. If I explode every component the issue goes away, but not if I simply rename them. Any solution to this?

I often make large models of entire towns where I turn 3D dwg roof "outlines" into surfaces using sandbox tool, then use the great plugin "Fredo6 joint push pull" to extrude houses down past terrain level, which works pretty well even when houses have complex roof shapes.

However, when doing many houses simultanously I often get error messages and need to do the roofs individually instead (even when it appears to have worked at first).
Is there any workaround or different plugin that lets me "push/pull" (extrude) very many (curved) surfaces along the Z axis at once?

My company bought a license for Speedtree, primarily meant to create trees for 3ds Max.

My question is, will this work for SketchUp too? My primary concern is whether it can generate simple enough geometry, which can be exported to Sketchup with transparency and UV mapping maintained.

I'm trying to make my colleagues use SketchUp more and Revit less for tasks where SketchUp is obviously better, and would like them to take advantage of certain plugins, such as the fantastic fredo-collections.

However, it is a lot of work to find and install each individual plugin. I tried copying the entire plugin folder to another user, and every plugin seemed to work just fine. Is this OK?

I don't understand, what do you mean? Everyone I know exports dwg files from SketchUp into AutoCAD when they want to use the drawing for detailing, sheet layouts, etc. What is there to be wrong about? That my colleagues secretly use LayOut behind my back?

I would love to know how many people actually use Layout. Everyone I know exports DWG's from SketchUp to AutoCAD and works in more details with more control on lineweight etc there, but we might be missing out if there has been any great improvements recently. Before forcing myself and my colleagues to learn it, I would like to know if there is any consensus on how useful, flexible and clever it is.

Thank you!