SketchUp to AC3D exporter

SketchUp to AC3D exporter

Developed by	James Turner and others
Initial release	0.1 (1 September 2008)
Written in	Ruby
Development status	Active (2008-)
License	GNU General Public License

With the SketchUp to AC3D exporter, developed by James Turner and improved by others, you are able to export SketchUp models to the .ac fileformat. The script works on both the free version aswell on the pro version.

Installation

You can download the script at this link. Place the .rb file into your SketchUp/Plugins folder. Now restart SketchUp and the script should be visible through the Plugins > Export to AC3D menu.

NOTE: on Google Sketchup 8, users are able to export as a .dae file, and AC3D is able to import .dae files- meaning no conversions are necessary if texturising in AC3D.

For texture format conversion, install ImageMagick:

• Windows - click
• Mac - for the moment, see this, but I'll switch to using a simpler solution in the near future

A note about textures

The AC3D exporter is set to export textures to the PNG format by standard. That means that for FlightGear to be able to display your model correctly, you will have to provide your textures in the .png format.

Also see: AC files: Textures and SketchUp: Correct display of texture colors in the AC file.

Development

The script is still in development at the moment. The current progress as of 12 September 2008 is:

Done:

• Geometry export
• Texture export

Known Issues:

• Texture scaling on the model may appear wrong, further testing required
• Material properties are guessed, so may appear different from Blender defaults. SketchUp has very limited material controls, so manual editing may be required.

To do:

• Conversion of lat- and longitude locations.