I am working on a large scale collaborative project with a team member who only uses sketchup. I will be doing most of the modeling in Rhino, but we want the option of interoperability so that we can both make edits and finally both do our own renders and execute 2D drawings from our respective programs. I am looking for suggestions as to how I can give her a working version of the model? I know I can export as skp, but then the materials/layers don’t transfer and the geometry looks different somewhat.
I think that workflow will cause you nothing but problems Erik.
The only thing I can think of that may help would be using 3DS format to exchange the models, using a plugin such as the NPower translator http://www.npowersoftware.com/NewPowerTranslatorsOverview.html to export nice quad faces out of Rhino, and help to get editable meshes into SKP.
Personally, I would just spend a few hours learning Rhino.
I think I may have been unclear. I am very proficient in Rhino and will be doing all of the modeling. My partner just wants to be able to make renders from my model in sketchup and possibly produce some section drawings. That is it. Is that possible? or a pain like you say
Sure Erik, was more suggesting for your partner than yourself.
I think it is primarily the editing of Rhino geometry in SKP that you will find difficult, as faces become triangulated.
If you are just rendering/sectioning than I imagine that should work. I didn’t realise that the Rhino SKP export didn’t maintain layer structure, 3DS won’t do either. That perhaps only leaves mesh DWG?
Than you for your advice. We started today and I realized there are a set of issues when importing sketchup floor plates into rhino as the meshes are quite irregular even after meshtonurbs is completed. I ended up just rebuilding them. This makes it a laborious process to get clean polysurfaces! I will try your suggestions especially when the workflow is reversed from rhino to sketchup.
Rhino talking to sketchup is lousy - I don’t know why but it just remains hopeless, I guess its not a high priority.
What I do is just open the rhino model in moi, then export it to sketchup from there - moi has a really nice clean sketchup export…
