I can confirm this works for any model I tried.
Thank you! Exported OBJ is now topologically correct and thus suitable for a lot more uses.

TIG, thank you very much for working on that and for clarifying your terms about modifying the script.
I will test the new version as soon as possible and report success or failure.
Have a good day.

Well, I'm just reporting a bug. A cube, having 8 vertices, is exported with 24 vertices
This is a wrong representation of the object and has a very noticeable impact on all uses of the OBJ file when topologic integrity is required (3D printing is one example).

Of course I expect nothing from you, being it freeware. Whether you want to fix this bug or leave it there is entirely up to you.

Sadly, your code is not even covered by an open source license (it's "all rights reserved"), so people are not allowed to fix this bug and redistribute a fixed version.

Thank you for the answer. Yes, it looks like those internal faces were already in SketchUp. A new test shows 12 facets, and that's fine.

Still, the other problem persists. Even when the exported cube results in 12 facets, the file contains 24 vertices (you can check this by opening the OBJ file with Meshlab or any other importer, or even by counting the "v" lines in the OBJ file). This looks very wrong, as the original geometry only has 8 vertices. Can you help me about this issue too? Thanks!

Hello TIG, thank you for writing such an useful plugin. I look forward for using it in a 3D printing workflow but I noticed two problems - the first one being more serious.

1. Draw a cube and export it as OBJ. It contains 16 triangle facets, but I would expect 12. If you inspect the generated OBJ you'll notice that it generated a tetrahedron inside the cube by triangulating the internal space. Hence the four more facets. I think this problem needs to be addressed. What do you think about it?

2. Resulting OBJ files contain lots of duplicate vertices. I think this is because you don't reuse vertices but you generate new ones all time. However this corrupts the topology of the generated OBJ file. If you open it with, say, Netfabb Studio Basic (a popular free utility for 3D printing) it will report all faces as unconnected. I don't know whether SketchUp API associates a unique ID with each vertex; in case it doesn't I think you could just build your own dictionary based on coordinates and check whether you already wrote that vertex and if so, just reuse its index when defining the new facet.

Thank you for your work, and I really hope you can fix these two things.

jhauswirth kindly gave me some feedback about my file.

Grey zones were actually caused by a not-so-obvious z-fighting issue. Let me copy and paste jhauswirth's answer:
@unknownuser said:

Its the shadows that are causing the problem.
In SU in the "Shadows Inspector" there's an "On Ground" option. This causes the "On Ground" shadows and shadows from regular faces that are on the same plane as the ground to z-fight. So what you can do is turn off "On Ground" shadows, then right-click on your Scene and select Update so the new shadow setting is saved on the scene.

That works. However, LayOut images still lack antialiasing and I get bad edges. I still have to try out multiple line weight/resolution settings before I'm definitely satisfied with LayOut exported files...

jhauswirth, thank you for your interest. I sent you my LO file as a PM.

Yes, I had a look at that thread but there are no z-fighting issues here. I also tried to set render_to_lbmp but nothing changed.

Waiting for your feedback, thank you again!

Hi all,

I'm trying out SU7/LO2. I'm having trouble trying to output hi-res files to print scenes from my model which uses textures and much detail. This is the test case:

1. export as PNG directly from SU (5000x3500pixel)
   http://img383.imageshack.us/my.php?image=suwa8.png

2. import into LayOut, same style, "High" output quality set under Paper options, then export as PNG (5000x3500pixel)
   http://img150.imageshack.us/my.php?image=looa8.png

The one exported directly from SU has way better antialiasing. The LayOut one has very bad edges, pixelated and sometimes missing. Also, sometimes shadows grey out receiving faces (instead of just darkening their texture). I tried with different line weights (0.25~1.00). I also tried to export as PDF. No luck. I also tried to set the rendering to "hybrid", and that slightly enhances the output quality, but still the image exported from SketchUp is nicer.

[BTW, what does "high/medium/low quality" mean in technical terms? speaking of DPIs, that is...]

My workaround is: export 2D images from SketchUp, then import them into LayOut... not ideal.

What am I missing?