[fv]

I just read Jeremy's post Novedge.
http://blog.novedge.com/2014/05/product ... mself.html

Great spot on post. Very valuable as much for advanced users as beginners.

I have one question. If you consider the real world as a reference for setting up the conditions for a good rendering as you say it in the blog. How do you know the Sketchup scale is properly exported to render in Maxwell.
Francois

[JDHill]

Francois neglects to mention that at about the same time, he did a very nice webinar, which can be viewed here. I always like to watch such things, since it gives a good view on how the plugin is used, and therefore, what can be improved. We can always talk about changes, but watching a real person push buttons for an hour provides a view that can't be seen any other way -- so thanks very much for the webinar, Francois.

How do you know the Sketchup scale is properly exported to render in Maxwell.

Conversion is handled automatically by the plugin -- it is not possible to end up with an MXS where the geometry is not exported at the same real scale that you have drawn it in SketchUp. So, it just comes down to making sure to draw things to scale.

[fv]

tx for the nice words on the webinar. I was actually a bit preoccupied during the webinar. We had meetings before, during and after the webinar because of a rather exciting recent developement at our office.
Anyhow, I hope the webinar will raise even more enthusiasm for Maxwell's plugin and Sketchup. We surely are doing very well with this combination winning a number of competitions over the last two years.

I don't exactly know how to measure geometry in Studio before creating a MXS reference file. Maybe I should just export a 10x10x10 meter box from SU to Studio and save it as an mxs as reference. That way I can import this reference and check my mxs models for scale before I use them in SU as referenced components. Often just before a deadline imported references come up in the renderings rotated or out of scale. I need to work out a routine for preparing mxs files that are used in SU as references. Not a big deal but an important part of the work on the mxs component library.

[JDHill]

There is no way to directly measure things in Studio, but you can look at the grid in the viewport (in the lower-right corner, you should see a label indicating e.g. "Grid: 0.125m") to roughly confirm that it is correct. It should not be necessary, though, since if you draw a 10m cube in SketchUp, and export it to Studio, there is no way it will not show up being 10m there. Similarly, when referencing the same file in SketchUp, the scale will be compensated automatically again.

If you find cases in which referenced MXS geometry is rendered rotated or out of scale, I would like to see the files; the development of MXS references has involved various adjustments in the engine along the way, for cases where nested transformation hierarchies can produce issues with references. MXS files from the SketchUp plugin often present extreme cases in this respect, since nested instances are so pervasive in SketchUp and the plugin. As far as avoiding such issues, the rule of thumb would be: the simpler the MXS, the better. The best case would be an MXS written from a SKP that contained nothing but faces; next best would be one containing nothing but faces and groups. This is because non-grouped faces are written in world space and transformed only by the conversion scale factor, and because groups produce a mesh transformed only by the group's transformation. Things to avoid would be scaling (especially mirroring by negative scale) objects in the SKP from which the MXS to be referenced is produced, and placing items away from the origin.

I recently added a new page to the docs pertaining specifically to the creation and use of MXS references; I'll add this info there.