Hey, guys. It's Aaron. I wanted to answer a question today. This came up - it's actually
come up a couple different times. People are asking about exporting from SketchUp versus
exporting from LayOut. I don't want to get into the finer points of exporting. We've done videos
on exporting before. We've done stuff exporting for CNC, exporting DXFs from SketchUp, plenty of
stuff on exporting or or printing out from LayOut. So what I wanted to look at more, or focus in on,
was when to use which program for exporting. It really depends on why you're exporting and
what you want to get out of what you're spitting out of the software. Let's dive in and take a look
at when to use SketchUp or when to use LayOut for your exported files. I have here a SketchUp
file and I have a couple different things in the SketchUp file that I may want to export. We'll
start with the simplest. This is maybe a little frame for something. It's a little frame shape I
have made out of two x fours or something. I want to do is get this and get a reference image. Then
get this out so I can go maybe take this out to my garage and cut these pieces out, or, I don't know,
something simple where I just want a reference image. That's the first piece I'm looking at.
If that's the case, with this right here to export this, this is something I would just do
from SketchUp. I have access to LayOut. I've had it for years and years and years,
but there's still plenty of times where I take a simple reference image like this and
just print it right from SketchUp. Here's a couple of things to note, one thing is,
wherever possible, try to get it flat to the screen. One thing I'll do is click on a surface
and hit align view. That's going to assure that I'm looking straight down. Because I drew this
in 2d and it's flat, it's not going to matter too much if I switch between parallel projection
and perspective. The real big difference here is whether or not that axis is off at an angle
or not. One thing I do try to do when I export though, is go to my Styles > Edit my Styles > and
change my Background to a white color. This is just to be frugal. This is just saving on ink
so it doesn't flood my entire background with that on a printout with that gray color. Once
I've got that set up, then all it takes to export is File > Export. I'm going to do a 2d graphic.
Here I'm just going to Export this as a PNG or something like that. Then boom. Spit that out.
There's options in here, but again like I said, I'm not going to mess with this too
much. I'm just going take my screen as it is, export it as a PNG; then I can print that out,
or take it out of my phone or something like that, and have that image. So that's the most
simple way to export and that's something I would do straight from SketchUp. The other thing is
take that just a little bit further - that is exporting a file for machining. This is going
to go to a CNC or something like that. I just created this little shape. What you'd want to do
is put it in a group like this go to File > Export > and this is a little confusing. It's 2d geometry
and I want to send this to a CNC. I'm going to Export > 3d model > and Export it as a DXF file.
By exporting as 3D, we did a whole video on this, is going to export these curves as true
curves rather than segmented lines. That's what I would do to export for CNC. I would
do it directly here from SketchUp, using a DXF file 3D export. That is probably the
other 2D thing that I would export. That would be something like a screenshot PNG or data to go to
CAD/CAM software for CNC. The other thing, the most frequent thing you're going to export from
SketchUp directly, are 3D models. I have this little 3D model from Rodrigo Cersi.
If I wanted to take this and export it for, say 3D printing, or I want to take this
out into some other program where I want to animate it, paint on it, or something like that,
I would put it in a group first. Then File > Export > 3D Model. In here, I would put
it out as an STL or an OBJ or a DFX; whatever file type I'm going to need to actually use it
once it comes out. SketchUp is - a lot of people use it alongside things like
3D printing or creating assets for animation. SketchUp itself doesn't do a lot of that work.
That's all done by creating the geometry in SketchUp, and then exporting it to other programs.
This is how you do it. This would always be coming out of SketchUp. 3D models want to go out,
they go out of SketchUp. You would not take them out into LayOut, and then try to export it for 3D.
Speaking of where we do go to LayOut; I have a house here. People have, a lot of times,
asked about, "how do I get this house to scale to print directly from SketchUp?" SketchUp is not
made for that. It doesn't have the tools for that. There are tricks you can play with setting the
screen size to an exact size, and then exporting an image and that sort of stuff. Honestly,
I've seen descriptions of how that works. I've never gone through and done it myself because
it's not the tool for it. SketchUp is made to help you, as easily as possible, create the 3D model.
When it comes time to creating a scale drawing, that's what LayOut is for. If I wanted to,
the only thing I could think of while working on a house like this that I would want to export
was maybe if I have a question on something. I come in here and I'm like, "this dimension
is not right." So, I want to come in here and put in a tag like this or something and say,
"Question?" I could do something like that, and then now export that as a PNG that I can send
over to somebody because I have that question. I don't know. The only time I would really export
anything that needs plans would be something like that. Clarification/RFI kind of situation,
where I could use SketchUp, as it is, to just grab a picture out of it and that's it. I would
not try to create the plans. Which takes us to LayOut. Let's take a look at LayOut.
Obviously, the spot I'm going to use LayOut primarily is this; creating scaled drawings.
That is a huge piece. You can export 2D imagery from SketchUp. You could throw it on a page,
but getting it scaled is difficult. In LayOut, of course, it's really
easy. I click on this and come over here. It has Ortho and Preserve Scale turned on, and it's
put to a quarter of an inch equals a foot. When I export this, I don't have to do any work to scale
the model differently or anything like that. I just know that when I hit it, I could measure
it and a quarter of an inch is going to be equal to a foot. Done. That's exactly what LayOut does.
At that point, I go to File > Export, and I can export this as a PDF or I could export it as a
DWG to even export it as a PNG or JPG. Obviously, there's a lack of precision once I get into things
like converting this all to pixels. If I export it as a PDF or DWG. DWG I would want to use
if I'm going to some other program. If I have my title blocks or setup, that sort of thing,
in some other CAD program that I want to use to put this image into, I would export DWG or DXF.
PDF would be like my final, I'm just going to print this or send digital documents to someone,
just export this as a PDF as it shows. Now, because of that DWG/DXF export option,
I do have the option of taking geometry and exporting it. This could, potentially,
go to CAD/CAM software for CNC or go some other place. I could actually put things on a page
here and export it that way. If I do that, if I choose to do it here instead of SketchUp,
you do want to be conscious of these options; specifically right here. Do I want to export
paper size, or do I want to export model size. That's what this bottom question asks right here.
Export for SketchUp exports all entities to model space at current paper size. So you want
to be conscious of that when you export. You should always look at options when you export,
but specifically if I want to take this geometry and export it as a DXF for use elsewhere - I want
to be sure to set my presets correctly so that I get the file I'm looking for and not some
weird jumble of lines at a scale that is going to be unusable.
So that was a fairly quick run through. Like I said, the question was, "When do I export
from SketchUp versus LayOut?" and I hope that covered it. I know there's other use cases,
there are lots of other use cases. Most of them are pretty straightforward and you just export
from SketchUp or you just export from LayOut. Those are the things that I could think of
where people might cross over and want to do one versus the other. You can, of course, use LayOut
for all of your 2D outputs. I mentioned a couple of ways to pull a file out of SketchUp. You can
go to LayOut with a quick sketch and export it from there. No problem. That's perfectly fine,
but those are the main export options that I could see. Those are my thoughts on which ones
you use in SketchUp and which ones you would use for LayOut. If you like that, go ahead and
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