Hi Maya, yes as JTB mentions this is probably going to be difficult to work in anytime soon.
The problem is that MoI and SketchUp just use different methods for representing shapes.
MoI uses smooth surfaces called "NURBS", and SketchUp uses polygons.
If you have very simple models in SketchUp, each polygon in SketchUp could become a NURBS plane in MoI, that's probably what you're ending up with you Sketchup -> VectorWorks -> IGES method.
But there will be pretty big problems with more complex models, especially with stuff that is meant to be smooth like a sphere or cylinder. In Sketchup these are modeled by a large number of little tiny polygon facets. That type of structure does not work well with MoI, MoI is intended to have smooth surfaces modeled as one NURBS surface.
It is possible to convert a NURBS surface into polygons by dicing it up into little polygon facets. But it is not very easy to take a large number of polygon facets and convert it back into a single smooth surface. Kind of like you how can make apples into applesauce but you can't make applesauce back into apples again.
So it's kind of a tough problem to do it in a very complete way.
I guess it might be possible to try and only bring in only simple flat polygons and skip any type of curved surface representation... However, it takes quite a bit of time to do any kind of file importer, it will probably be quite a while before I'll be able to experiment with that.
- Michael
|
