I have been having an issue when importing DWG’s into SketchUp and then rendering in D5. The 3D objects in AutoCAD are auto-assigned specific colours (based on company’s layer states), but have different layers based on material type. Sometimes the colours of different layers overlap (i.e. two different layers both use green as their colour).
I can see that they have different tags once I import the file into SketchUp, but D5 only recognizes the colour and groups them together based on that, not by the tags. I rarely use the same material for two different tags, so this is frustrating!
Is there any way to get D5 to recognize by tag from SketchUp rather than by common colour?
Unfortunately, our SKP Plugin has yet to support SketchUp Tags. For now, materials are detected through the differentiation of these materials (color or by texture). As a workaround you can do these:
You may select the specific surface, then select “All with Same Material” or “All the Same Tag.”, After selecting, you may need to change the colors of the surfaces that are not meant to have the same material in D5 Render. (Tedious Process)
Alternatively, if your SketchUp models are grouped, export them to D5a and enable the “group structure info: 2 Layers” option. This will allow D5 to recognize the group hierarchy. You can then select individual groups in D5 and enable “make unique” to treat identically colored grouped objects as distinct materials.
Are there any plans to implement the SketchUp Tags support anytime soon? Having to manually adjust surfaces in SketchUp is what I’ve been doing but it is extremely tedious especially with complicated models- it also makes the workflow take much longer.
We are constantly improving our SketchUp Plug-in, and support for SketchUp Tags will surely be implemented soon, but we can’t disclose or estimate the time of its release. Stay tuned for the updates. Thank you for your understanding.
