When you have thickness (as yellow face) internal faces (of the yellow face) are the same than this one or the all thickness is integrated?
have you an Xray view of this? (or skp format)

Hi Pilou - the thickness is just exactly the same as whatever you have created in the model in MoI.

I just happened to hollow out that area by doing a boolean as part of the test.

I've attached the 3dm and skp files here so you can look at them.

- Michael

Seems cool! Facets are good oriented!
For rendering i will answer you in more time because I have something in work in the same time
(times of rendering seems very long)?? Resolved! It was the other thing who is blocking the process of calculate ! :)

Good news, Michael! Thank you.

One problem is that it is rather slow to export larger models that end up with quite a few triangles in them.

I profiled this a bit, and all the time is taken up inside of the SketchUp's IO toolkit so there does not appear to be anything that I can really do about speeding it up.

You may have to wait as long as 10 minutes or so to let more complex exports finish.

- Michael

Hi Michael, very good news.

Comparing time with Rhino SKP export for the same model, which is the difference?

George

Cool news Michael, Thank you

in fact for Google Sketchup from Moi there is now 2 direct possible formats 3DS & SKp ;)

Hi George,

> Comparing time with Rhino SKP export for the same model,
> which is the difference?

The Rhino SKP export is definitely much faster. However, there are a lot of problems with the resulting data - it looks like the Rhino exporter does not fuse together faces so for example a box comes in as 6 disconnected pieces (and actually each face piece is made up of multiple polygons instead of one) and push/pull on those faces does not behave like a normal solid box made natively in SketchUp would.

I think it's probably better to have the "high integrity" but slower exporter instead of one that is fast but has bad structure to it.

But I'll take a bit more of a look at it today though, there is a possibility I could do more of the joining/fusing work in my own code instead of relying on the SketchUp library code to do it.

- Michael

Hi Pilou,

> in fact for Google Sketchup from Moi there is now 2 direct
> possible formats 3DS & SKp ;)

That's certainly true, but really you will want to avoid using 3DS format, since that format can only contain triangles. 3DS will give you a result like this:




While the SKP export will give you a result like this:





- Michael

Yes but...
Clean plug is Menu Tools / D.B.Tools / Clean Selection
then Soften edges

Hi Pilou, that's certainly not bad that there are some plugins and extra steps that you can use to help to clean up .3ds imports...

But it is much better to just have all the data clean right from the very beginning without the need to do extra steps.

I've also heard from people who have had problems getting just the built in automatic soften edges to work completely right on a more complex model.

That's one thing that tends to be a problem with relying too much on extra steps like this, they can sometimes not work quite properly on complex shapes.

If you want to continue to use .3ds export instead of .skp you are certainly welcome to do that though! ;)

- Michael

Sure soften edges is just a view not a geometric transformation
I don't prefer 3DS, it's just an another possibility if the time of produce an Skp file is too long ;)
test will be possible at the next beta :)
And if the number of poly of an object overpass 65 535 SKp format will be better ;)

Hi Pilou, I will see if I can reduce the time for producing the .skp file - at first I thought I would not be able to do but now it looks like I may be able to if I handle all the logic for how to fuse together points myself instead of letting the SketchUp toolkit do it.

- Michael

So keep the good work!

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your answer. In my case, after exporting an SKP file from Rhino, I use a ruby script (delete coplanar edges) to reduse the extra geometry. So is there a possibility selecting your method (much better of course) in small models and like Rhino's in case of large models?

Regards,

Hi George - actually there will be no need to worry about that, I've been able to rework the new exporter so that what was taking 10 minutes with a larger model now only takes 10 seconds. So it should be suitable for handling large models now as well.

The main limit will be that SketchUp does not really handle models of a much larger size very well itself, so if SketchUp is sluggish with the model you may have to try lowering the density that you use for curved surfaces to avoid creating too many polygons.

I think you'll be really happy with it though, you should get optimal results right away without any need for cleaning things up. Please let me know how it works for you once you get a chance to try it after I have wrapped up this next beta.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thank you very much for your answer. Can't wait to test new beta.
Keep on the great work.

George

Hi Michael ...
When might we see the next beta?
cheers,
eric

Hi Eric - nearly there, I think I should be able to wrap it up tomorrow.

- Michael