Trimble SketchUp Reader/Writer

The Trimble SketchUp Reader and Writer allows FME to read and write the Trimble™ SketchUp™ format.

The SketchUp format is the native format used by Trimble's SketchUp Pro and SketchUp Viewer 3D modeling packages. SketchUp Version 2015 or earlier is supported.

Note: The Trimble SketchUp Reader/Writer does not yet support SketchUp text, dimensions, lighting, or camera.

Overview

A SketchUp file consists of an .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.

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.

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.

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.

Geometry on hidden layers will not be read by the SketchUp reader. To read this content, modify the SketchUp file to set hidden layers to Visible, or set the Read Invisible Geometry and Layers parameter to Yes.

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 the units specified under SketchUp’s Model Info.

Reader Overview

The SketchUp Reader produces FME features for geometry data in an .skp file. The SketchUp Reader extracts all the geometry in an .skp file for further processing.

A simple SketchUp faces (a face with no holes) will be translated as an FMEFace. A complex SketchUp face (a face with holes) will be translated as an FMEDonut wrapped inside an FMEFace.

A SketchUp Edge is translated into an FMELine segment.

Writer Overview

The SketchUp Writer creates and writes features to a SketchUp (.skp) file.

Tips for Writing SketchUp Files

  • If there is an existing SketchUp file in the folder with the same name, it will be overwritten.
  • Feature type fanout can be used to write different SketchUp files to the same dataset folder.
  • If the SketchUp file cannot be written, the translation fails.
  • Note that invalid geometry can cause the translation to fail. Using the GeometryValidator transformer may help in such cases.
  • Non-planar surfaces can be repaired using the GeometryValidator transformer. Alternatively, SketchUp can attempt to repair these surfaces when opening the output SketchUp file.
  • Using the Merge Coplanar Faces parameter with non-planar surfaces may produce undesired results. Using the GeometryValidator transformer may help in such cases.

  • Non-triangular faces and meshes can cause issues when writing textures, as Sketchup materials are optimized for mapping to a triangular face. Using the Triangulator transformer may help in these cases.