Google SketchUp blog explains GIS workflow

[KaylaFolkins]

On the blog last Friday they included a video from Green Mountain Geographics that outlines how SU and ArcGIS 10 work together:

http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/2010/10/arcgis-10-and-sketchup-8.html#links

Friends again - yay!  😉

[KennyMorris]

I'm having trouble with the ArcGIS to Sketchup workflow. I have 4 building footprints that I extruded. I want to get them into SketchUp for Editing. Here's what I'm doing.

Layer 3D to Feature Class ----> Multipatch to Collada -----> Open in SketchUp 8

SketchUp will not open Collada file. The files I try to open are .dae SketchUp gives me a message saying "this does not appear to be a SketchUp Model"

I've watched these videos over and over trying to pick up on a step I may have missed.
http://blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/3dgis/archive/2010/10/25/ArcGIS-to-SketchUp-and-back.aspx
I noticed in one of the videos the collada folder contains .kml file. In my collada folder I do not see a .kml files only .dae files.

I'm at a loss at this point. I know I'm missing something just don't know what. Any info would be great. Thanks

[JakubSisak]

SketchUp will not open Collada file. The files I try to open are .dae SketchUp gives me a message saying "this does not appear to be a SketchUp Model"

You have to import the files not open.

Sketchup 8 -> File -> Import -> Files of TYpe: Google Earth/COLLADA Files (*.kmz, *.dae)

The model will look weird; Select all and explode -> select all faces and paint -> group

[KennyMorris]

Thanks for the response. When I import here's the error I get.

[JakubSisak]

I get the same error when I attempt to import KMZ that was generated from ArcGIS into Sketchup 8.

As far as I am concerned, it is currently NOT POSSIBLE to import data other then Multipatch using ArcGIS 10 into Sketchup version 7 and 8. I started a thread about this issue both here and on StackExchange with no results. The only way is to export to DXF then import to sketchup but data will not be referenced so some of of geo-referencing method is required to scale the DXF. Also as far as i know only COLLADA can be brought back into ArcGIS georeferenced, not vector features.  The entire Sketchup Model can be imported so long it is saved as SketchUp 6 version, unfortunatelly it will not be geo-referenced.

However, i am able to import multipatch features generated with 3D Analyst into Sketchup, but so far i have only tried converting TIN to multipatch and importing into sketch-up.