TIG, please explain the "limitations on what is included" and why those limitations exist on the SketchUp built-in PDF export facility and noton the other ones you mention.

I have been frustrated for many weeks now, trying to print out my SU model that is a 2-D street map of an area about 1.5 square miles in size, with so many small alleys that there is a need for small text to show the names.

I cannot seem to control the Line Width using the Free version of 7.1 for Mac OSX.

The street boundaries (Edges) are rendered in one of two ways in the PDF -- either as black lines 1 pixel wide (too fine to print clearly) or as GRAY lines which print even morefaintly or drop out altogether. The type prints beautifully, even in the small sizes.

I have tried many, many different combinations of print settings, attempting to adjust the Line Width to print both the Edges and the Text legibly.

I have spent many hours trying to search the Web for explanations of the problem.

Apparently there are different degrees of adherence to the PDF ISO standard, but I haven't found detailed explanations.

I feel trapped by the limitations of the Free version, but too cautious and suspicious to purchase the Pro version. The two main features of the Pro version are (1) much more output control using Layout and (2) much more Export flexibility, allowing other vector-oriented software to import and improve the file. Either of these features might solve my problem -- I would certainly expect so.

The Free version can export raster files (PNG and TIFF) but only one vector file format, an (apparently) flawed PDF.

Like other contributors to this Forum, I have been dismayed by some of the bizarre bugs and deficiencies in SketchUp, such as its inability to print models of a certain size, or to correctly print models displayed with "too much" white space around the model on the screen at the time of printing. This does not inspire buyer's confidence in considering SketchUp Pro.

I haven't found a Pro owner to talk to, in order to find out how well it works.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

This topic is crucially interesting to me right now.

Elsewhere in this Newbies forum I have described a problem
"Type faces for Maps" with one of my very first SketchUp models.

It is really just a 2D drawing, a street map of about 1.5 square
miles with lots of tiny alleys, hence lots of small text.

The size of the SKP file swelled to about 30 MB, which a
friend called "titanic" compared to other models. I have no
way of knowing; I'm a newbie.

Other numbers, from the "Model Statistics" panel, show that
it has, at one of the recent revisions of the drawing:

Edges: 344768
Faces: 120967
Component Instances: 783
Component Definitions: 399
Layers: 9
Styles: 1

... and all other stats are 0.
It uses no colors but black, and has no textures
or other bitmaps -- just edges and text, in only
two fonts (Arial Narrow and Century).

So my model looks quite modest compared to the one Gaieus
described. I tried to Purge it, and reduced it only about 1 MB
or about 3%.

Still, 30 MB is much larger than some e-mail attachment limits.

And I have to wait for it often while it loads on my little
MacBook.

Is this file small, medium, large, titanic... or what?

Thanks to all.

Well, I'll be dipped in India Ink, as we say in this country.

It does seem to have made a 1.82 MB file available for you to play with.

Now Gaieus can do the operations I was not successful with.

I tried to select and hide the edges of the type elements, leaving
the "fill" of black "paint" but did not see the expected results.

In any case, you can see the problem, because of the geographer's scale of
the map I am drawing. You can see a scale in feet above the map excerpt.

The complete map fills the bounding rectangle and the file is approximately
30 MB, which I had no way of perceiving as abnormally large (I'm a Newbie,
remember) although I had to be patient as it loaded, etc.

My hardware is pathetically modest (a little MacBook laptop) so I may well
have bumped against some practical limits and need to move up.

The fundamental problem is that I hope to print this image at a scale
of 1 foot to 5016 feet in order to create a handy map. It appears (this
may not be true) that the Line Weight controls in the free version of 7.1
apply both to the edges ("line segments" in ordinary parlance) and the
edges (in the usual sense) of the characters of type rendered as vector graphics.

This means that when type is small enough to fit into small crannies on the map,
the street outlines are too narrow to print at 300 dpi -- and if they are thickened,
the type fattens up and becomes illegible.

I haven't had a chance to work with 7.1 Pro to see if Layout can deal with this.

In addition, the Export restrictions on the free version have kept me from
trying to use other applications (such as Inkscape) to work on an exported
vector file.

I hope that TIG's plugins will let me keep the file in SketchUp, which has done
a good job with the project up to the final point of printing it out for the ultimate use.

I am attempting to upload a file of the map I have drawn,
with almost all its content deleted in order to reduce its size,
which has been called "titanic" by at least one SU user.

a tiny sample of the map I have drawn

Hmm -- that looks more like text than anything else.

That was the result of the "Place inline" option shown below as I entered this post.

Well, you can see the file name.

Thanks Chris -- my plugins folder is not in the User hierarchy.
I think I followed instructions from some ReadMe file in placing it,
but for whatever reason, here is the current complete path:

Macintosh HD/Applications/Library/Application Support/Google SketchUp 7/SketchUp/plugins/2Dtools_4

The application installed itself from the download with the following path:

Macintosh HD/Applications/Google SketchUp7/SketchUp.app

If this doesn't look correct, please copy and correct the path(s) as they should look.

Remember, even though I need plugins, I am a Newbie hence this Forum.

It certainly does look like TIG's tools will help.
I downloaded them from the link, and put the folder
in the subdirectory under the Mac OSX Library path
as directed.

The instructions say that:

"The 2D Tools can be accessed from the "Draw/2D Tools" submenu..."

(but they don't appear there yet)

"... or, perhaps more readily by the "2D Tools" toolbar, which can be
opened from the "View/Toolbars" submenu."

(but they aren't there yet either, and the name is slightly different)

So I must need to do another step or something.

In my Mac OSX version 7.1.6859 of SketchUp (free) there is a submenu
View > Tool Palettes
which shows just three options, namely:

Large Tool Set
Google
Dynamic Components

So, perhaps my installation isn't done yet? -- Ray

OK, I tried that.
On Mac OSX, it's SketchUp > Preferences > Open GL

and I have only checked "Hardware Acceleration."

3D Text still refuses to place text.

Instead, the cursor changes to the "Move" cursor, and interestingly,
so does the hint window, explaining how to set a Move point.

The 3DText command seems to have forgotten what it was doing
and quietly slunk away backstage somewhere.

Incidentally, another 3D Text bug persists; the font choice keeps
coming back as Italic even after I have changed it back to Regular
innumerable times in recent weeks.

I don't know if these bugs occur only in Mac versions.

I am beginning to wonder how people manage to use SketchUp,
at least with the parameters I have. Any other OSX-6 users having these
problems?

Ray

All of a sudden, things that worked yesterday don't.
I'll try to describe it from recent memory.
I tried to add another piece of 3D Text.
When I pressed the "Place" button, SU never came back
with the usual cursor and "outline" of the text to be placed.
After clicking, no 3D Text was visible.
The cursor, however, remained in the form of the Move cursor,
and began revealing inference points when hovering.
Clicking on the Pan tool gave me the Orbit cursor instead.
I attempted several more times to create 3D Text. Fail!

Performance was noticeably slow during all this and I
became alarmed. I managed to close the new version of
my file and exit SU, but even restarting it didn't fix SU.

Thank you for the replies to my problem.

Please note that I use MacOS -- does Tig's plugin work with that? (Tig uses Windows, according to the profile. If it would work, I would like to be directed to how to obtain it. It certainly seems like a sensible improvement -- why wouldn't SU work that well without Tig's help?

As for the "trick" method of hiding the edges, I haven't tried it yet, but I wonder. Since SU refused to make the 3DText "Filled" no matter how I tried to specify that, I had to "fill" each piece of text manually using the Paint Bucket tool loaded with black "paint" to fill in the edges. In the future, would I have to keep doing this and then hide the edge that was needed to accomplish a "fill" operation?

And having hidden (not deleted?) the edge, would the "fill" still serve as legible 3DText ?

As for d12dozr's suggestion, please remember that my font controls do not look like that (Windows versus Mac again) and what's worse, they are apparently permanently grayed out so they do not work.
I cannot change to point sizes, or alter the 50-foot height.

I still don't see where the italic default and the 50-foot dimension are coming from.

Would anyone care to address that question?

I may not be able to participate in the discussion for a while -- I am having other problems with some aspect of my internet connection that no one has been able to fix yet.

Thanks for your attention to my problems.
Ray

Sorry, Chris, I forgot to answer your question about styles.

No, of course I did not apply a "sketchy" style or any other
style modification. This is a map, and it is trying to be as
clear and sharp as any street map from professional cartography.

-- Ray

I wish I could provide an example. I have been trying for several hours to draw one.

For some reason I cannot fathom, the Font choice controls are grayed out, so although
I can select a font, I cannot push the radio buttons to switch between point size and
"height" in the units used in the model.

At some point, many drawings ago, I chose to make the letters 50 feet high, which
sounds insane but makes perfect sense if you are mapping a city region about 5000
feet on a side. Now, SU insists on making letters 50 feet high on a model 8x10 inches,
which is not very useful.

The books by Aidan Chopra and Chris Grover offer no clue as to where to find
the controls for 3D Text. Just like other documentation, they assume that it works.
By contrast, I find that if I choose Arial Narrow Regular, it ALWAYS gives me italic, which
I can correct only by choosing Italic (!) and THEN picking Regular again. As for the size,
there is no way to change the 50 foot box -- it's grayed out too.

I find much to admire about SketchUp, but as a tech writer of 21 years experience,
I find it hard to believe that this software is ready for release. Please help me
understand how it is supposed to work. I know it has been used and developed for
ten years already.

I began by drawing a box 8 inches by 10 inches, and then added a grid of lines
accurately laid out in units of printer's points (1/72 inch) to compare to the type face
reproduction. But so far I have been unable to place a single character of 3D Text
type into the box.

If someone else can make such a drawing, it might help me and other people to
understand how 3D Text is supposed to be used and printed.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I have been using SU (free version) for about 6 weeks. My first major project is to draw a street map to scale. I decided to use SU because eventually I can "drape" my map over 3D terrain created by drawing contour lines. I chose to label the streets with 3D Text because I want to place the letters carefully and permanently in relation to the street outlines and the other letters used on the map. Part of this intent is to have the letters scale exactly with the street outlines when the map is printed out at various enlargements. This is desirable over a certain range of scales, as opposed to having the letters scale separately, or not change at all. From my reading of various books and sources, I gather that 2D Text is meant to either stay "on the screen" or to re-position itself according to the view of the model, and either face the viewer or one of the principal axes. So I chose 3D Text.

My current problem appeared when I first attempted to print out my map on my new Epson Workforce 1100 ink-jet printer. It can print beautiful sharp renditions of the street outlines at certain scales, but the strokes of the letters fatten up and render them illegible. Alternatively, it can print beautifully legible letters at certain scales, but some (not all) of the street outlines are faint or even disappear completely. So far I have found no scale at which both features on the map print correctly.

I know that the conversion of vector-based models to raster-based printer files involves a lot of computation and sometimes some unfortunate compromises because of the fixed dimensions of the pixel grid. But I don't know how to get at the controls that would allow me to fix the problems, for instance by choosing the right
font, size, scale, pixel resolution, or other parameters.

Please direct me to any source where I can read about these problems, if it's too hard to explain.

For example, are there any "Type Face Sample Sheets" in which I can see how they print at various sizes?

One hint that may shed some more light on my problem is that the same "edges" (lines) have the same printing problems consistently. That is, if I direct the Print routine to create a PDF instead of directing it to the printer, I can see that the edges which disappear have extra gray pixels, like an anti-aliasing technique. The lines that print clearly show only sharp, black pixels. I suspect that this may result from some setting in the series of
panels in which I choose the parameters for rendering the model for printing.

Thanks in advance!