We are looking for a way to transfer our Revit models to Sketchup to do more design exploration.

We've tried various different ways, most of them result in very poor geometry. Yesterday we've tried Moi and we were pleasantly surprised to see the geometry came in really nice (.sat export from max, converted to .skp through moi).

However, there's are two limitations that we'd like to find a solution for:

- the model hierarchy was not translated (no instancing of identical objects for example)
- no materials came in

For the materials: we know that the material id's are included in the .sat (if we open the .sat in 3ds max the material id's are assigned right). We're not expecting the texture to come come through, just that the material assignments are maintained so that we don't have to paint each face individually.

Anyone has any ideas?

Okino PolyTrans 64?

They are pretty much the leader in 3D file type conversions. Plus, their CEO is a hands on guy who has personally helped me build several different conversion pipelines. Great support!

Hi Schiette, sorry yes currently MoI's .skp export does not write material assignments. That is something I want to work on in the future but for now you'll need to find some other conversion software to meet your requirements.

- Michael

Thanks for your replies!

I've tried Nugraf 64 but it was disappointing. Importing the .sat worked but on exporting it to sketchup I got an error before it even started. I also tried importing an .fbx and exporting that as sketchup but there was very bad triangulation.

Moi generates the best geometry conversion from sat to Sketchup I have seen so far. We'd be willing to purchase half a dozen licenses if it was able to generate materials so feel free to contact us as soon as Moi has got this running.

It would also be great if every .sat solid would be put on an individual group. No need for nesting, but now everything is one giant group. Having a separate group for each element would help.

Hi Schiette,

re:
> It would also be great if every .sat solid would be put on an individual group. No need for nesting, but
> now everything is one giant group. Having a separate group for each element would help.

This is actually already implemented in the current MoI v4 beta, so it will be in the next version.

In v4 every separate object in MoI is made into a different group in the .skp file, so for example 2 objects that happen to touch each other in MoI won't have their vertices merged together anymore.

- Michael

Hey Michael,

That's interesting! Does that mean that the solids will carry through Sketchup as solid groups? If that's the case we could then do some cleanup operations in Sketchup using the solid union operation (I know that could be done in MoI as well but people are more comfortable with Sketchup here).

Hi Schiette,

> That's interesting! Does that mean that the solids will carry through Sketchup as solid groups?

Yes that should be the case with v4 now - every solid in MoI should come through to Sketchup as a separate group there.

- Michael

Before the V4 you can export as format 3DS and explode one time inside Sketchup = you have all "Components" ! ;)

They will named "obj0", "obj1", etc...

Thanks Pilou. I tried using .obj but there's terrible triangulation when brought into Sketchup. We want to edit the geometry in Sketchup later on so we want to keep the geometry as clean as possible.