[Plugin] KML Tools (2.0.0-beta) — updated 31.05.2013

[Aerilius]

This is an error message from SketchUp's Collada importer, not from my plugin (and I unfortunately can't do anything about it).

SketchUp supports a lot of the Collada standard (actually more than any other program) but not all. SketchUp doesn't understand how your source program specifies the textures. I have reported this as a bug some days ago.

[TIG]

If you open the main file in a plain-text editor like Notepad++.exe then it will be 'readable'...
See what the image-file parts says...
Logically it should be a simple file-name [image.jpg], so that if the image-file kept with the main file it will be found.
If it's a 'relative' file-path including a folder then you must keep the image-files in that specified folder [e.g. images/image.jpg] with the main file.
If it's an 'absolute' file-path [i.e. with a drive letter etc] then you need to recreate that exact same folder for those image-files [e.g. c:/temp/images/image.jpg].

When the importer runs on the main file it should then find the image-files where it's expecting them to be...

If the image-file names in the imported file bear no relationship to the actual image-file names you have, then you are in trouble - but even then you could try copying and renaming the image-files to suit, if you know which one is which that is...

[Aerilius]

Yes, TIG is right, that is the normal way to trouble-shoot plain-text file formats like Collada.
Here it's probably not a problem with the file path, but the xml structure is different (<effect><profile_COMMON><image>) from what SketchUp expects (<surface>,<sampler2D>,<library_images>...). I fixed this once manually, but it's so complicated that you wouldn't want to do do it with more than one or two files.

[banxee]

Hi & thx for the quick reply.

I had tried opening the files in a text editor, thinking it was a pathing issue. I duplicated the path found in the text, but it still gave me the missing texture warning.

The difference in the XML structure seems to be the issue.

Oh well. At least I get the surfaces in the correct places.


Thanks again

[biba28]

hi,
first thank you for this plugin it will help me a lot in my project,so I will make a 3D modeling of a city,
I have a shapefile I have converted to KML using gvSIG and now I want imported the kml file in google sketchup
I insert your plugin, but that nothing is imported
I want to know if there is a structure ( balises or something) that I should add it to kml file for the import is correct.
please help me
yhank you for any help

[Aerilius]

The plugin tries to extract from kml files what it can import, so it does not aim to import all. Maybe you can pm me an example file so that I can take a look at it and adjust the plugin

[Aerilius]

I fixed the issue and uploaded a new version. Thanks for reporting!

[Anton_S]

Behold!!! Aerilius with mighty plugins approaches!!

[CochranRB]

I am new to SketchUp. I saved a GE path as KMZ and KML files, but SU will not import the KMZ. Your plugin may assist with this problem. How do I download it?

[TIG]

I am new to SketchUp. I saved a GE path as KMZ and KML files, but SU will not import the KMZ. Your plugin may assist with this problem. How do I download it?

The very first post in this thread has the tool's ZIP that you must download: then instructions on its extraction, installation and copious info on its usage...
It might not help, depending what the files contain...
If you still have problems perhaps post the file here with a bit more info...

[qpik]

First of all thank you for the plugin.

Have I just found a possible bug in kmlimport.rb, linestring method, line 422 - "<tesselated>" instead of "<tessellate>"?

I'm learning how to model a terrain using my mobile's GPS and Sketchup. Since the Symbian app I use (GPSmap, http://www.vikinggames.hu/product.php?id=7) logs only CSV/KML Waypoints and additionally uses commas instead of points, so I have to manually convert the values. I'm new to KML (and I'm not a programmer) so the easiest way I noticed so far was to just put all the coords into a <LineString> tag, but in Sketchup the altitudes are wrong (i.e. flat or clamped to GE terrain).
So I just go through your code and KML documentation to find a solution.

Edit: which is as simple as adding <altitudeMode>absolute</altitudeMode> inside <LineString> tag.

[Aerilius]

That looks indeed like a bug! Thanks for reporting!

[Sygsky]

Hi! I'm interesting in follow - how this scripts should/could work at all?

I installed it correctly (think so), restarted SketchUp, called menu of "KML Tools", pointed "Export KML file" item, spend some time to look at the modal dialog, at last clicked "Ok" button, created new export file name and what? Nothing occurs! No any file anywhere was created, no any messages typed, nothing. Module keeps silence )

I have last version of free license SketchUp downloaded yesterday.

Thx in advance.

[TIG]

Do you have permission to write files to the destination folder ?
Try your Desktop...
Is there any exportable geometry in the SKP you are trying to export... etc ?

[Sygsky]

Do you have permission to write files to the destination folder ?
Try your Desktop...
Is there any exportable geometry in the SKP you are trying to export... etc ?

Yes, yes, yes and yes all times But suddenly I found the solve. Don't sure what was an origin for the problem, so only describe result:

Rubi is not one of my multiple languages but throw the code I found that in some checks if any external/internal functions in module return nil, it exits without warnings. As last action I did is a file name pointing, I tried to set full file path manually in the input dialog field, e.g. "C:\Temp\1.kml", not only name as it show in system dialog itself ("1.kml"). And it worked! So as I can suppose, alone file name is used internally to be used with some standard prefix of directory different from one used in a real path, use din dialog.
Why? Windows 64b 7 Professional and Rubi pair knows only/ So export problems is solved. Let me check import ones in next time )

Thx for the wishes to help for this small problem!

[KentD]

Hi Aerilius

I´ve used your plugin now and it seems to really work.

I have to export a whole modeled city and I want them to be separate models.

Your plugin does the trick! I make components of every and each model an export them.
BUT if I have to ROTATE any of my models they will be exported randomly(it seems) and NOT in their right position.

Any good suggestion how to deal with this?
Regards
KentD

[Aerilius]

The plugin should consider the rotation of the group's/component's bounding box.
If the group is rotated, the rotation will appear as a "heading" attribute in the KML file, while the Collada file contains the group's inner coordinate system. At least it should work that way. Can you send (pm) me a file where it doesn't work that way?

[SBMattingly]

When using this tool that I just downloaded, I get a small window first that says "Loading correct elevation data failed. Internet Explorer 8 (or higher) required." I have IE 8 and SU 8.

Ruby console says the following: "fetching elevation from url: http://api.geonames.org/astergdemJSON?f ... returnJson
returned:
{"status":{"message":"the deaily limit of 30000 credits for demo has been exceeded. Please use an application specific account. Do not use the demo account for your application.","value":18}}


Please help. I would love for this plugin to work.

Stan

[humbertoanastasia]

Hi there! Thanks for the plugin.

I'm having an issue, though.

I try to export an object, the dialog box opens, everything ok, and then...
Sketchup and the plugin just stop working.
Any ideas??

Tanhks!

[Aerilius]

What happens? What does "stop working" do?
And it's good if you tell me the file size, as described anything larger than some hundred kilobytes will take long. There is no simple way to make it faster.

[humbertoanastasia]

Thanks for the reply.

In fact, after I read your post, I tried "cleaning" the file, and minimizing it to the sole part of the model i wish to export. And... It worked out fine!

Thanks, and congratulations on your job!

[coda13]

thank you very much!

[Aerilius]

You're using a webdialog for the import - you can use the XML parsing capabilities of the web-browser:
http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_parser.asp

I'm working on a solution with a DOM xml parser.
It's more than 5 times faster than REXML (and probably much more in newer browsers).

[Aerilius]

A quick update for compatibility with SketchUp 2013. It was released so quickly.
This is the last version before 2.0

[Aerilius]

I have uploaded a beta version of KML Tools 2.0!
If you like, please help testing and give me feedback if files don't work with it.
The new version has

• significant speed improvements, up to 7× faster import
• a reliable xml parser and better support for nested kml structures
• better error handling

[kubark42]

Just tried the beta, but it made no file output, just an empty directory. 1.4 works fine for me with the same workflow, so I'm either doing something wrong or it's not working on my model.

EDIT: Sorry, I should have included some info. This is OSX 10.8 running SU8. Model can be downloaded from https://www.dropbox.com/s/q5a1hzqvcwlc39u/Geo-fence.skp

[kubark42]

So this tool is really awesome, and almost exactly what I need. Thanks a million!

Time for a tiny bug report: when setting the altitude mode to absolute altitude, instead of adjusting the Z values to the true altitudes, the script just sets the altitudeMode field to "absolute". The result is that a model that was drawn on the surface is buried in the ground in Google Earth.

[Aerilius]

Thanks for the feedback! I'll check your file and fix it.

[kubark42]

Hi, Aerilius--

I found out why I was having altitude problems. I don't program in ruby, but it looks close enough to other languages iI do program that I was able to muddle through it and realize that Altitude is not an attribute in GeoReference, so get_attribute("GeoReference","Altitude") returns 0. By changing Altitude to ZValueCentered, I was able to get a negative value in inches that is seemingly correct for my elevation. I cannot find a definitive reference on this, and there is also ModelTranslationZ which has the identical value for me, so I'm unclear which is the appropriate way forward. However, both solve my problem. So in conclusion, I've replaced line 253 by @ground = -@model.get_attribute("GeoReference","ZValueCentered").to_f.to_m and that solved my problem.

Now I'm struggling with an odd error. For some reason when exporting a group to multigeometry the KML is missing the opening <MultiGeometry> tag, but it has the closing one. This causes an import error in KML until I manually add the XML tag.

EDIT: terrain_alt([0,0,0]).to_m doesn't seem to return any sensible values. I'm interested if you have an idea about this, too.

[kubark42]

Okay, figured out the second bug, and why I wasn't seeing it before:

Code: Select all

    if facecolor
      @out.puts "  <Style>"
      @out.puts "    <LineStyle>"
      @out.puts "      <color>#{linecolor}</color>"
      @out.puts "      <colorMode>normal</colorMode>"
      @out.puts "      <width>1</width>"
      @out.puts "    </LineStyle>"
      @out.puts "    <PolyStyle>"
      @out.puts "      <color>#{facecolor}</color>"
      @out.puts "      <colorMode>normal</colorMode>"
      @out.puts "      <fill>1</fill>"
      @out.puts "      <outline>1</outline>"
      @out.puts "    </PolyStyle>"
      @out.puts "  </Style>"
      @out.puts "  <MultiGeometry>"
    end


only places the <MultiGeometry> tag if there is a facecolor. So moving " @out.puts " <MultiGeometry>"
" to right after the "end" solves the problem.