How to export Named Views (to Sketchup)?

It looks like exporting Rhino to Sketchup doesn’t preserve named views :frowning:

If anyone is aware of any workaround that would be really useful. Perhaps another format that Sketchup can read?

I’ve seen only this one forum post addressing this issue so far, but it seems inconclusive.

  1. I can’t find any sensible fbx importer in sketchup (installing transmutr or whatever this is seems like an overkill).
  2. Vray has its own format (.vrscene), but when exporting it from rhino and importing it in sketchup doesn’t seem to import the named view neither (only the geometry).
  3. two hours into this I figured this little plugin ene_camMemory can recreate sketchup scene based only on a file it saves in %APPDATA%\SketchUp\SketchUp 2020\SketchUp\Plugins\ene_camMemory called savedCamera. It takes a few parameters:
	parameters << cam.eye.x.to_s
	parameters << cam.eye.y.to_s
	parameters << cam.eye.z.to_s
	parameters << cam.target.x.to_s
	parameters << cam.target.y.to_s
	parameters << cam.target.z.to_s
	parameters << cam.up.x.to_s
	parameters << cam.up.y.to_s
	parameters << cam.up.z.to_s
	parameters << cam.aspect_ratio.to_s
	parameters << cam.perspective?
	parameters << cam.fov.to_s if cam.perspective?
	parameters << cam.height.to_s unless cam.perspective?

I take that if those could be exported from Rhino you could effectively recreate them in Sketchup with this plugin…

It’s a pity, Scenes transfer from Sketchup to Rhino but not the other way…

Agree, it’s not ideal at all…

Found a workaround - using ene_camMemory plugin in Sketchup and the script below in Rhino to recreate named views one by one. Only works for perspective views:

  1. Run this script to retrieve active viewport parameters:
    GetActiveViewportParameters.py (807 Bytes)
  2. copy paste them to the %APPDATA%\SketchUp\SketchUp 2020\SketchUp\Plugins\ene_camMemory\savedCamera file (for sketchup 2020)
  3. “Retrieve From Memory” using Eneroth’s ene_camMemory plugin
    image
  4. Do it for each and every single view you need to export :frowning:

It’s not an ideal solution, then again why use Sketchup in the first place…

Script:

import scriptcontext as sc
from Rhino.UI.Dialogs import ShowTextDialog

active_viewport = sc.doc.Views.ActiveView.ActiveViewport

string = str(active_viewport.CameraLocation[0]) + ";" + \
         str(active_viewport.CameraLocation[1]) + ";" + \
         str(active_viewport.CameraLocation[2]) + ";" + \
         str(active_viewport.CameraTarget[0]) + ";" + \
         str(active_viewport.CameraTarget[1]) + ";" + \
         str(active_viewport.CameraTarget[2]) + ";" + \
         str(active_viewport.CameraUp[0]) + ";" + \
         str(active_viewport.CameraUp[1]) + ";" + \
         str(active_viewport.CameraUp[2]) + ";" + \
         "0.0" + ";" + \
         "true" + ";" + \
         str(active_viewport.Camera35mmLensLength) + ";"

ShowTextDialog(string, "Active Viewport Parameters")

Looks complicated…

I think it would be nice if the developers of the Rhino could upgrade the Sketchup export to include named views, especially since it works the other way around.

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Yep, I just needed to get this working for the current project :sweat_smile:

Also hope that someone from the Mcneel Team will add it “upstream” later on.

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