Does it possible to export only curves with SKP format? (Google SKetchup)
Seems not but will be very useful!

SketchUp doesn't actually do curves. All circles, arcs, etc. are composed of straight-line entities. You cannot have polylines, except using ruby script weld.rb to connect (join) various segments in one. As a workaround now you can use 3dmCurves2Dxf to export curves from MoI and import to SketchUp, change from entity info, the number of segments if it is possible, to get a smoother curve.

Personally, I prefer to finish my shape in MoI, and export to SketchUp. The result is much better.

Regards,


George

Hi Pilou, hi George,

Pilou - like George mentions SketchUp does not actually have curves, only stuff made of lines...

I suppose it is possible to do a conversion of curves in MoI into line segments into SketchUp.

However, just doing that for the regular case would probably cause a kind of a messy output, because it is common for models in MoI to have construction curves hanging around in addition to the edges of the built solids.

SketchUp is not really set up in a way that expects to have curves duplicated like that, it would probably cause some difficulty to eliminate those inside of SketchUp if I just exported them all along with the surface model.

Maybe what I could do is only export curves if you only have curves and no surfaces in your whole model, or if you are using the Export selected command and have explicitly selected some to export....

- Michael

@Georges and Michael
Yes it's that :) (and yes I can use the 3dm2dxf but...
like for this file;) (and yes it's more easy to make the plane inside Moi but...
as Moi has more efficient tools 2D for make any drawings of lines boolean in one pass!
( in Ketchup you must erase by hand the lines intersected! ) that will be useful to have a direct export skp ;)
...and sure that is not vital ;)

Hi Pilou & George - I have added curve output to SKP for the next v2 beta.

It will work the way I mentioned previously - it will write curves on Save As if you have only curves in the whole model, or the other option is to select the curves and use Export instead.

If you have surfaces and curves mixed together in the same model, it will not write out the curves in that case when you do a Save As to try and avoid getting duplicated objects in SketchUp where it could be hard to separate them out.

- Michael

More and more powerful! !)

Ps I believe that in Ketchup free "double curve" or more are automatically cleaned for keep only one!

Hi Michael and Pilou,

Very good news for next beta!

Pilou, I am not sure if there is a ruby for checking model in sketchup for double curves. If you mean dline.rb (double line) is for constructing something like walls..


George

@George
No no ;)
In Google SKP
I f you draw a curve (alone) then copy it, then move it , then replace it at the same place I believe the 2 curves are merged!

?

Hi Pilou,

> If you draw a curve (alone) then copy it, then move it , then
> replace it at the same place I believe the 2 curves are merged!

That may be correct, but here you are talking about drawing an edge in SketchUp - when MoI writes data to a SketchUp file it does not run in an identical way as when you are drawing things in SketchUp, different code is running in these different cases.

I would probably need to do all that analysis myself and also another complication is that it could be pretty easy for a surface edge to have a different number of tessellated points in it than a stand-alone curve that is tessellated, since the surface edge also has points added into it where the UV polygon grid of the surface intersects it.

So it may be somewhat difficult for me to achieve any fully automatic "stacked up curve" removal.

I guess it could be possible for me to do it by a doing an in-depth comparison of every curve to every edge to look for duplicates in the original model data before doing any tessellation. That kind of full model comparison is potentially a very time consuming thing and has to be done very carefully so as not to take a large amount of time, so it is not something that I really will be able to do right now.

That's why I am using this method of not exporting curves by default if you do a SaveAs and have surfaces and curves together, that is probably safest to avoid "stacked up" type duplicated curves and edges which would probably be somewhat difficult to eliminate in SketchUp.

But if you would like to have all curves written at the same time as writing surface/solid objects, that will still be possible by selecting them all and using the Export command from MoI.

- Michael

Hi All,

As a long time user of SU and MoI, I'm just curious about why you guys would move a model from MoI to SU?

Would it be for "dressing up" purposes, ie, adding materials and setting up scenes for rendering?

Hi Steve,

Adding objects that are difficult to construct in SketchUp, align them, Boolean operations that are limited in SU, double cutting openings in walls from views, are few examples.


Regards,


George

@ Steve
Another big reason is that ketchup is the more easy free box modeling prog and becomes more and more powerful!
And it has behind it the Empire's Google! And the version 7 is coming soon ;)
Moi + ketchy = the zen modeling! in the first image Moi can be help because that is some rustic method but efficient ;)
By Silver Shadow
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=12513 Making of
here modeling is only ketchy ;) (render is not ketchy)

Sorry George, I didn't make myself clear!

What I mean is if you build a model in MoI with its arguably superior modeling capabilities, why would you then export it to SU?

Just curious

Steve

Yes, Pilou, I know you are a big fan of ketchup:)

That model by silvershadow is pretty amazing. That guy has a lot of free time!!

I can see that a good workflow could be

build model in MoI
export to SU
add materials
export to KT
build scene
render

Because of my arch background, I export from MoI to Cycas which (apart from being a great arch application) has a good, easy portal to povray