Worth a shot, I'd say. I'll try this when I get back to work on monday!

Thanks for the tip!

//Olle

Dont know if this was what you were asking for, Jim, but to create objects that seems to be painted with different colors, you can do this:

Turn on "Color by layer", face style "Hidden line" and line color "By material" in your standard crayon style, and get a result like the one attached. As far as I know, this works with all styles, and I have this as my default style when working on floor plans and such (though not crayon style ), and each type of object in a separate layer (chairs in one, tables in another and so on).

// Olle

Hi!

I've just started tinkering with Layout, figured I should give it a try, rather than my current (rather tedious) setup; exporting to .pdf, editing in Adobe Illustrator, copying it to my .ai-template and then resaving it as a .pdf.

For now, my only issue with Layout is that when exporting to .pdf, the SU models inserted in Layout is exported as ordinary images, rather than vector images. As a result of this, all printed documents get some ghosting along the printed lines (I guess this is in fact a result of the printer/driver trying to dither the image to fit the color and coordinate space).

One of the key requirements of my work are crisp exports, as I tend to do mostly black and white line drawings, like floor plans and such.

I guess one work around would be to export the view/scene to pdf, and then inserting it in Layout, but then - why not keep using my current setup with Adobe Illustrator? A remedy for this could instead be that users could control the way SU models are imported/drawn in Layout, ie choose between vector/pixel output. This could also be a remedy of sorts for the (sometimes) extremely large files created by Layout, since a vector image usually uses less space than a pixel image.

Any ideas/comments/workarounds?

// Olle

Hi Howard!

Thank's a lot! That saved my day - really! I guess TrueView does what you suggest it does, using screen coordinates. Feel's good though - knowing that SU does what I want, even when I don't really know why

Again, thanks for all the help!

// Olle

@alpmeadow said:

Hi
I am not familiar with any other cnc setups, but as you can see it can be carved.
Good Luck
alpmeadow

Nice model! What CNC-setup do you use? I don't remember the make of the setup I'll use, but I guess that doesn't really matter anyway, I'm only the designer - not allowed within 10' from the machine they know I'll just get more stupid ideas if I get to close

@unknownuser said:

Your case is easy, as the shape is already flat. Just export to DWG as a 3D model, and the origin remains in the same place. Basically, as DWG files go, all are 3D files, there is no separate 2D DWG file format.

This I was aware of, and as you probably figured from the .skp, my export is supposed to be 2D. The problem however is still present - the origin is centered in the shape when exported. At least it seems this way in Autodesk Trueview 2009 - which is my only way to confirm - the axis-origin shows up smack in the center, as you can see in the attached screen shot, also - if you look down in the left corner, at TrueView's status bar, you can see that the coordinates show negative numbers when the cursor is in the lower left part of the drawing. Last time I used AutoCad though, was like -96 or something like that, so my knowledge of that software is, to understate it, somewhat limited .

I'm starting to think that the only way to resolve this issue, is to export it from SU to dwg, open it in AutoCad, move the shape to the right position, and then save it again.

Any other suggestions?

Also - is this really the preferred result of dwg-exports? That the axis origin moves from modell-origin to center-of-model-origin? It seems weird to me

// Olle

Hi all!

I made an egg-shaped curve in SU6, and am know trying to export it to dwg-format, so that my carpenter/fabricator/whatever-the-right-word-is can import it into his CNC-router.

He specified to me, that he needed the drawing in dwg-format (not wich version, but I figured I could solve this later on), and that the origo should be placed in the lower, left corner of the 2d-drawing. I believe this is because the board that will be routed will have one of it's corners positioned at the origin of the drawing.

Unfortunately when I export the model, the origin seems to be placed in the middle of my shape. I've attached the .skp, so that you can give it your best shots. Unfortunately .dwg's aren't allowed in the forum, so I can't upload my exported file. To replicate my results, open the .skp, make sure that the drawing is in parallell projection, and export it as .dwg. The settings for the .dwg-exporter should be:

• Full scale (1:1)
• Release 14
• Profile lines: none
• Section lines: grayed out
• Extension lines: do not show

Any ideas how to do this? Any one else who has had this same problem?

thanks in advance for all the creative answers I'll get fingers crossed

// Olle

Egg.skp

@tim said:

Also had long periods of beachball after rotating a fairly simple component (a cupboard door) - not a problem in the actual rotation which was perfectly smooth, but after finishing the operation.

I'm using a new MacBook, and as Tim said, everything seems to work except for the beachballing after selection/rotation. I tried turning off hardware acceleration, and from what I can tell that helped - selection and rotation works without beachballing, and everything else runs as smooth as one could expect without hardware acceleration.

// Olle