Xara/Sketchup

**Ross Macintosh** · 04 May 2006, 12:44 AM

Looks good Nowire!

If you guys are trying GoogleSketchUp be sure to enable the 'Instructor' feature from the 'Window' menu. It will open a floating panel that provides context-sensitive instruction. Its a great visual way to learn the program's tools & features. Also note that by clicking on that panel's top bar it will roll-up so its out of your way -- roll it down when you need some help.

Regards, Ross

**Nowire** · 04 May 2006, 01:03 AM

Thanks Ross.

I can't believe this program is free. It's great and very easy to use. I get stuck once in a while specially when I automatically thinks I'm doing CAD, and try to use CAD commands.

Yeah, that instructor thingy is very helpful. I did this one in about 30 min. or so, I'm pretty sure if I work on it some more I can still improve it.

Does anyone know how to create a rounded edges? The Axim actually have rounded edges, but I haven't found a way to do it yet. I gotta check out those instructional videos.

Let's see some more sketchup!!!

**stratocast** · 04 May 2006, 10:47 AM

I think the idea of a free Sketchup is great. I been using Sketchup for a time now and it's brilliantly conceived software IMO.

For instance, when my daughter and son-in-law decided to build a house, I translated the plans into a 3D view using Sketchup and tweaked the shading in Xtreme to help them visualise what it will look like.

**-=Drifter=-** · 04 May 2006, 12:28 PM

Wow - nice!!!

And thanks for the tip, Ross.

**stlewis** · 04 May 2006, 06:38 PM

What gobsmacked me about it was that even just to do the first tut it was SO easy. I got thoroughly put off about 3D with Corel (now what was it that came with Draw 5 or 6?) - the castle was the first tut. Even that was seriously hard work.

I shall have to change my feelings about 3D - even just to do a mockup to trace in Xtreme to get the perspective right.

Thanks to all for prodding me.

....but having tried to draw a cone sitting on top of a cylinder a la Corel.... no - still tricky! I probably need to persist.

**Ross Macintosh** · 04 May 2006, 08:05 PM

I'm really happy people are discovering SketchUp and how much fun it can be. Well designed software like Xara Xtreme and SketchUp are rare things of beauty. For years now I've been singing the praises of SketchUp but its hard to convince people to try a $500 program when they assume they won't be buying it. Now that there's a free version the whole world can discover it.

@Last, the developers of SketchUp were aquired by Google just a couple of months ago. @Last's old moto was "3D modelling for the rest of us". It related to the reality that most 3d modelling programs are so complex (and expensive) that ordinary people have been left behind and most 3d work was being done only by pros who've devoted lots of money and effort to their learning complex, powerful programs. Most ordinary folks are not even aware that 3d visualization can be a useful tool. It can be!

Google's vision at this point is focused on their free Google Earth program. They see the free GoogleSketchUp as a tool that ordinary folks can use to model the whole world via GoogleEarth. (I remember when Google search was beta search engine indexing only a couple of million webpages. People laughed at them when they said their goal was to index every webpage on the internet. Now they are a $100 billion company and they have indexed almost everything). Releasing the free version of SketchUp might just see some of their goals happen. A few days back I posted in the Google Group a link to this site featuring some impressive SketchUp modelling. The site creator noted that after the posting he went from 67 hits to 18,000 hits in the one day! This suggests to me the free GoogleSU has been extremely popular so far even with no real advertizing by Google yet.

How does the popularity of growing popularity of SketchUp translate into an opportunity for Xara Ltd.? Easy. Charles & company should be one of the first graphics software companies to support an import of the .kmz format associated with models on Google Earth, or SketchUp's .skp format. I realize these formats contain 3d information. What would be great for Xara Xtreme is if it could import the file and display it as a 2d hidden-line vector image. The model edges would be lines and the model faces would be shapes. For an importer to work I think it would have to function like a convertor between the 3d model and a 2d vector file like a vector PDF. I believe there are open source convertors for other 3d program formats to pdf so some of the groundwork might already be available. The goal in the suggestion is to be able to easily use Xara as a rendering system for SketchUp generated vectors. Its a good fit to me.

Regards, Ross

**-=Drifter=-** · 04 May 2006, 08:41 PM

Sounds great to me!!!! Ross, why don't YOU just do it???!!!!!!!!!!

**jamesmc** · 04 May 2006, 10:18 PM

You can sort import PDF into Xara now, well a copy of it anyway. What you do is get some software called PDF995. I think it costs $9.95

What this does is put a print to PDF menu option on almost every piece of software you have including Google Sketchup.

Once you have your image ready in Google Sketchup you just print to PDF in the file location of your choice.

Then you open up the PDF, copy the object/file and paste into Xara.

Once you are the paste menu of Xara you can paste it as a Windows Meta File. Which of course, gives you a few more options on doing some modifications if it has a proper WMF structure to export to other programs.

IMPORTANT: If pasted as a Windows Meta File, make sure you scale your Google Sketchup to an appropriate size or you will have one monster image in Xara that may be hard if not impossible to manipulate.

You can also paste as a independent bitmap or regular bitmap and go from there.

The last choice is not any different than using Google Sketchup to export a compatible file format, but it's nice to know that PDF files can be brought into Xara by sneaking through the backdoor.

note: You will get a flat image, no manipulation of vertices, but it's there to do your own thing in Xara.

Attached is Scene from Google Sketchup to Xara via PDF copy using PDF995 print utitlity.

**Ross Macintosh** · 05 May 2006, 04:54 PM

I'm going to haveto try that James. Big Thanks!

**jclements** · 05 May 2006, 05:00 PM

James are you copying the PDF info directly from Acrobat Viewer (I never tried that) or importing the PDF into another graphics app like CorelDRAW or Illustrator first, then copying it to the clipboard and then pasting into Xara? I have used the latter method.