Dwg Not Importing Into Sketchup

[Recaredo Latreche]

Iam trying to import a Sketchup file into Vectorworks 2016. When I use "Import Sketchup File" and click on the chosen file, nothing happens. The Sketchup settings window doesn't open, and nothing imports. There isn't an error message, just nothing. The file window closes and I return to my Vectorworks screen.

I think it just showed up blank for me at first, too. The drawing was "north" a little bit. I wonder if you try it again and hit Command 6 you might see that it really was there. Just further away from 0,0 than you expected.

I believe if you have VW 2016 the Sketchup files have to be from 2015 or earlier. I'm not positive, but I believe that Sketchup 16 was released a few months after VW 16. So there is usually a 1 year lag.

After the import finished I managed to save the file. Then I had to restart the computer to make it useable. Just reopening the file took 32GB of virtual memory. It struggled, but it was finally able to export to VW 2016.

One thing I've occasionally found when importing SketchUp objects is that a single SketchUp texture might import into Vectorworks as hundreds or thousands of separate textures, one of for each polygon in the model... depending on how it was originally mapped in SketchUp. This has severely slowed otherwise simple imports. This may or may not be related to the issue at hand.

I the sketchup file has materials attached to each individual mesh triangle inside the group, as opposed to all the meshes and line to have the default material, and the whole group or component painted with the selected material.

I have been trying to import some sketchup furnitures from sketchup into revit, I have no problem doing that but when I try to apply any material this doesn't work at all. Some links say I have to separate each piece and assign a layer "bylayer" before importing into Revit, some people say I need to explode the furniture and then I will be able to apply materials but when I explode the furniture disappear and I window pops up saying something about 3D elements were not recognized.

As you have seen exploding files can give other problems. Especially when exploding you will get a load of 'garbage' with it, like new linetypes, patterns and so on. If you have several of those families, your project will become one big mess.

Style of what? Entities? Materials? I don't immediately see in Sketchup what this is referring to. Maybe it's something super basic that I never learned? I know bylayer in Autocad, but haven't seen it in Sketchup. Thanks for your patience.

I am trying to figure out if I am using the wrong search terms. My questions seems likely to be a common problem: I have a complex SketchUp model that I wish to analyse through OpenFoam. Re-drawing the geometry seems pointless, and fraught with potential for error. I am sure that bringing in foreign models like SketchUp to Rhino is something that many users of Honeybee/Ladybug/Butterfly have struggled with. And yet I can find no guidance as to how to treat the geometry when importing so as to ensure reliable analysis. I have trialled the analysis with a simplistic model from SketchUp, and I get the same error message that I get with the much more complex model (reference to there being 8 arguments in the model when only 6 are needed).

Please make sure that in Sketchup, all the geometry that should be air tight from Energy modelling or CFD point of view, is a solid. A trick in sketchup to know if a geometry is solid is to pick one of the solid tools and hower over your geometry. It shows if the geometry is a solid or not. In almost all the cases, a solid in sketchup is an air tight geometry in Rhino.

The only reason I was persevering with the test issue was I was replicating with a very simple example the same error I was finding with a much more complex building. Your suggestions have provided inspiration. I am not very hopeful that the process necessarily will convert this building, but I can see I have only two choices: carry on with the standard desk top opinion based aerodynamics analysis that I have always done, or make this work with the complex design geometry. Copying the geometry in SketchUp is just not feasible. Thanks for taking the time.

@MichaelDonn, Is it possible for you to share the more complex model? In my previous life I used to prepare models for 3d printing and mold which is a very similar process. I want to see how complicated your model is.

this ability has been around for quite a few years , the quality depends on the 3D artist though some are very good , some not and have high polygon counts .so really slow 3D views down, but importing of .skp's is fairly common . its the 1st place to check if the CA library doesn't have what you need.

Texture, colors, and scale are all imported. Since the model comes in as a symbol, it has only one layer - the one you assign the symbol too. Others can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that none of the SketchUp layers transfer.

I saw that someone else posted that the Mac version of Chief will not allow for Sketchup to be imported. Is this true? As I have a Mac trial version and I cannot import Sketchup. I figured it was the trial version limitation.

Save to COLLODA and import that way. The toolkit that we use doesn't have a 64 bit version that works for Mac. The vendor of the toolkit has been unresponsive to our requests to make it work

I've just spent 15 minutes trying to figure out why this article 'Importing a 3D Symbol from an Outside Source' Reference Number: KB-00117 Last Updated: 07-30-2014 02:01 PM wasn't working - is it possible for someone from Chief to update the article to include Mac Users?

SKP import is not available on Mac owing to a lack of support by the vendor of the library we use for 64 bit applications. We have contacted them about this, but they are unresponsive so we don't know if it will ever be an option. Export to COLLADA (.DAE) and use that on the Mac. It is unfortunate that this option is not available, but it is out of our control.

I'm not using a Mac so can not verify this, but on a Windows machine the step would as follows if I wanted to import a .dae file:

1) download the .skp file from the warehouse

2) open the .skp file in SketchUp

3) In SketchUp I would 'EXPORT 3D model' in .dae format

4) import model in the .dae format into Chief.

This of course means you need to install the free version of SketchUp on your Mac...

Given that a 1x1km area consists of roughly 4,000,000 datapoints, I suspect that the first step is to create mesh with significantly less points (e.g. 100,000 to 400,000) before importing it into Sketchup.

My second attempt was to visit This data is slightly older (AHN2 from 2008 instead of AHN3 from 2015), but has similar high resolution (0.5 meter), and served my purpose. The websites has a great export function to select and download the region I was interested in. I downloaded two LAZ files with a 4mln and 150,000 point cloud, the later for testing.

This worked reasonably well for the sample export (170,000 points translated to 130,000 faces). It will not work for the 4,000,000 point export. Unfortunately, the subsampling resulted in a slightly larger mesh size (150,000 faces), not smaller, and I can't find a way for CloudCompare to reduce the complexity of the Mesh model. An alternative is to hand-pick points, and export that point list, but that seems rather tedious.

1.

Is there a way to "name" Groups (Component ?) in Sketchup.

That may help Bricscad to accept them as "not-so-anonymous"

and even accept them as Blocks.

At least Vectorworks tries do do so when chosen in Export Settings.

For me Bricscad IFC import is very good and IFC in general is for me

one of the best or most lossless conversion option.

Still lots of cleanup and rework needed.

So normally I try any possible exchange format and in the worst case

I try to mix the best results from all into my file.

I think Sketchup has tons of Plugins, maybe some can also help for

exchange.

Maybe a second Translation Software in between that has more

lossless Sketchup import and export options more suitable for Bricscad.

Maybe some of the authors of the Sketchup Files could be persuaded

to try Bricscad Shape instead. OK, that's not the same in many ways,

but would be perfect for Bricscad BIM.

I have been working with sketchup for years now now and the benefits (speed / visuals) of 3D modelling and materials in sketchup are still important for us, at least until Shape can add customizable material maps (material management as of now is very basic).

I therefore have been trying to test a reliable import process from sketchup to Bricscad.

I get at least a few Layers in for further separation.

I get Materials in (although I have never seen them assigned in Bricscad so far)

I get geometry in mostly as proper Solids.

If I get some Meshes in that may have been only Meshes before, they unfortunately

get some extra unnecessary tessellation (or they were corrupt already)

And I get all spatial elements and locations and BIM Tags in Structure tree.

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