dwg (autocad) to sketchup - faces for push/pull?

Hey

1. I have a bit of a problem. I've got my 2d shapes drawn in autocad, but when I export to sketchup it shows just the lines but there are no faces, which I would like to push/pull and extrude.

I've checked that all the shapes are closed polylines and are on the same plane, but sketchup doesn't recognize the faces, just the lines.

Is there any way to get this done without having to break all the shapes up into triangles in sketchup?

2. Also, when I extrude these shapes in cad and then export, there are heaps of triangles for even the simplest shapes (ie. cubes). Why does this happen? Is there a way to fix/avoid this?

Thanks

I've read that you can just trace over one edge of the cad shapes in sketchup and that should make the faces, but it doesn't :S

Mostly you can just trace over one line but I find that sometimes you have to draw lines between corners then delete them afterwards to get faces on my AutoCAD shapes. I have never had SU recognize the shapes only the lines.

Yes, the dwg import will not have faces. You can trace over a line to fill in a face but if the dwg work is not precise you will have issues. If you did the dwg yourself then you can be certain (I hope) that it is correct. I say this because I import stuff all the time that I drew that does not work like it should.

There are a couple of things you can do.

If you have a small dwg import, I.E. not many lines, then tracing over them will do fine. However if this will not prove to be efficient then you should employ a Ruby script called MakeFaces. It is free and you can get it here:

http://www.smustard.com/script/MakeFaces

You will also need the progressbar script for it to run. The progressbar is utilized by many scripts:

http://www.smustard.com/script/ProgressBar

Just install the scripts in your Plugins folder then restart SU. Here if you are on a PC:

C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 7\Plugins

It works pretty well but let me warn you, if you have a very large import then it will freeze up. Do sections at a time. This is SU freezing up not the script.

Now, if you have faces that will not fill in then the cadd is off. If you did not draw the dwg then there is a 99.9%+ chance it is off in some way. The best way to check is to turn on your color by axis. This will show any X, Y or Z lines as red, green and blue. See attached picture. The setting is in your styles dialog. If your line is slightly off axis it will cause a face not to close as it would not be coplanar.

There are many things you can do on the dwg end prior to importing as well. Make sure all corners are closed, polylines are closed, lines start and stop on the same axis, etc.

Having said all of this, I would typically import my dwg and use it as an underlay and start my SU file fresh. Now we are using Revit and I rarely import a 2d dwg. Now it is 3d dwg exported from Revit and believe me, there are issues there as well

Hope this helps.

Looks great I'll have to give that one a try, should save me a load of grief.

Thanks very much. I'll look into it

Also, just a heads up to anyone with this problem, you need to explode before you trace over a line to make faces.