What are the steps required to successfully export an entire 3D model (composed of TIN surfaces, 3D polygons, 3D polylines and 3D points) from ArcGIS 10 to Sketchup 8? Preferably, I would like the various components to line up. (Does not need to retain spatial reference)
Gone are the days when I was able to export TIN to Sketchup and easily export polygons, polylines and points with the ArcGIS plugin.
ESRI seems to think the process is a lot easier now… "Up until now this was a pretty cumbersome process. At ArcGIS10, this work-flow becomes much easier."
I respectfully disagree; Up until ArcGIS 9.3.1 it was a simple point and click operation (using the plugin) to select surfaces and whatever layers or selected features in the plugin and export. In fact it even opened SketchUp and loaded everything in and smoothed the surface if the check-mark was ticked off. And spatial reference was retained!
Has anyone tried to export complex TIN surface to Sketchup with the Collada technique? (No direct TIN export functionality now)
The Interpolate Polygon to Multipatch using TIN as input surface yields a result that looks nothing like the input surface:
As for line and point features it is possible to export to DXF 2007 then import into sketchup. Of course the data is not referenced so every imported DXF is placed in the default 0,0,0 position. I could overcome this by exporting "bounding box" features with each DXF but still – cumbersome….
I know people (myself included) have been asking similar questions but I still don't seem to be able to do this. Does anyone have a solution?
Best Answer
Since I've posted this question I found out why the rendering of the multipatch created from complex TIN surfaces renders this way on screen. (see above) By default multipatch shading mode is turn to smooth shading. Turning shading mode to flat shading improves the rendering. (Exporting complex and unclosed multipatches to Sketchup ready file types does not work)
As for exporting TIN to Sketchup surfaces, this is no longer possible. ESRI seems to be focusing on allowing users to replace existing multipatches with simple sketchup models in ArcScene and the current workflow is designed around the notion of ESRI users adding 3D elements to closed multipatch features created in ArcGIS (i.e. extruded building footprints). It is possible to substitute 3D symbols with simple SketchUp models and rotate and scale but Its safe to say that ESRI does not support any functionality boyond these simple task. ESRI most certainly does not support the exporting of ESRI features to Sketchup other then closed multipatch.