We have also been very frustrated by Sketchup. In my group are trying to use it to make technical diagrams in Away3D. It seems that almost all of the models in the Google Sketchup library are not "clean" and will not load into Away3D.
At the moment our workflow is: 1. Draw in Sketchup. 2. Extract the dae (Collada) file from the kmz zip. 3. Import this dae into Blender. 4. Clean up (random faces pointing the wrong way, etc.). 5. Save as dae. 6. Load into Away3D. 7. Export to AS3 with AS3Exporter. 8. Instantiate the AS3 object in Away3D. This generally works (with a lot of effort) except that we can't get phong materials to apply to the AS3 object in the last step. Fabrice is kindly looking at that problem for us. Fabrice suggested using AC3D instead of Sketchup. I think it does not read/write Collada but it will export an OBJ file, which you can load into Away3D. Fabrice says that this is much more reliable and efficient (low poly count) than Sketchup. AC3D is not free but it is pretty cheap. However it does not seem to have the object dimension input features that Sketchup has and that are important for making technical diagrams. Hope this helps... if anyone has a better suggestion I would be very grateful! Ralph On Jul 9, 10:13 am, MadMax <[email protected]> wrote: > No chance I could buy maya or max, could never afford those, nor have > the time to learn to use them. > > I did try blender some time ago and didn't have the time or patience > to learn that either. > > I've tried Sketchup and looks like I could use that with some outlay > in time. For the time being I just wanted to download and use existing > models to get my program working then eventually attempt to create my > own. Very sad if I won't be able to use this workflow. :(
