Google SketchUp Reader/Writer (deprecated)
Note: This is a deprecated format. See the Trimble SketchUp Reader/Writer.
The Google SketchUp Reader and Writer allows FME to read and write the Google™ SketchUp™ format.
The SketchUp format is the native format used by Google's SketchUp Pro and SketchUp Free 3D modeling packages. SketchUp Version 8 or earlier is supported.
Note: The Google SketchUp Reader/Writer does not yet support SketchUp text, dimensions, lighting, camera, or coordinate system.
Overview
A SketchUp file consists of a .skp file, that contains all components and entities used inside a SketchUp model.
The SketchUp file format supports 3D, polygonal, textured, and shaded models that contain faces, edges, component definitions, and component instances. Faces get their color and texture from materials that are referenced by the face. A SketchUp model is given a location on the earth by Google Earth, or by the modeler in SketchUp’s Model Info.
Faces Have a Front and Back side
SketchUp faces can have a front and a back material. If there is a front material and no back material, it is assumed that the face is one-sided, facing front.
The front of a face is defined as the face normal direction in a right-handed coordinate system. That is, when the front of a face is facing the viewer, that face has its vertices in a counterclockwise direction. The back of a face is the opposite side. A face can have a different material (texture and color) on the back of a face with different texture coordinates. The vertex normals on a back face are assumed to be the normals of the front face flipped in the opposite direction.
| File Name Extension | Contents |
|---|---|
| .skp | Geometric data and image data |
A single .skp file (also known as a SketchUp model) contains geometric entities (faces, edges, textures, and images) organized as hierarchical groups and assigned to a layer. A SketchUp model can also contain component definitions that provide building blocks of reusable 3D geometry.
More About Appearances
The SketchUp Reader will create appearances that can be used by an FME writer that also supports shared appearances. FME manages shared appearances as library objects. Shared appearances contain information provided by the SketchUp Reader that includes the appearance name, texture image and color information.
The SketchUp Writer will convert an FME appearance into a SketchUp material. If the FME appearance being saved has no texture, then a SketchUp material will be created from the diffuse color in the FME appearance. If the FME appearance being saved has a texture then a Sketchup material will be created with the raster data associated with the FME appearance.
More About Layers
A SketchUp model has a default layer, Layer0, that cannot be renamed. User-defined layers have names that default to Layer1, Layer2, and so on. User-defined layers can be renamed.
More About Components and Groups
Component definitions are represented as FME geometry definitions and component instances are represented as FME geometry instances. Groups are represented as FME aggregates if “Read as Nested Geometry” is set to “Yes” in the SketchUp Reader. FME meshes are written out as SketchUp Groups by the SketchUp writer.
More About Coordinate System and Units
The latitude-longitude location in the SketchUp model is used to define a custom local tangent plane coordinate system that describes the position of the model on the Earth. The units will remain linear and represented in meters.