A couple clarifications, though...
The text tag isn't intelligent enough, unfortunately. The true power of labels is to keep them from overlapping other labels dynamically as you pan and zoom and, unfortunately, Sketchup Pro isn't capable of that.tomdarch wrote:Actually the 'pro' version of Sketchup has a pretty cool 'text tag' tool that is fairly 'intelligent' at locating the text tag so that it stays readable from a lot of angles. The problem is that 'Sketchup Pro' is $500!
The problem isn't importing the data but keeping the spatial relationships. SketchUp creates in model space and uses 3D projections, not map projections. So you can bring in multiple datasets but the features will fall directly on top of each other instead of retaining their relative distances from one another.tomdarch wrote: Again, SU Pro can read/write formats like .dwg and .dxf, so that gives you a way to get vector data in from GIS/CAD. But you would find that if you tried to model a fairly large area of the Red in Sketchup, it would bog down pretty quickly - all those 'organic' contours and clifflines mean a lot of polygons! But as computers get better and the application gets better, that is an awesome goal!
As time moves on technology is eventually going to migrate 3D modeling and GIS into a friendlier interoperable platform. Hell, Microsoft just released Virtual Earth 3D tonight! This is big news for GIS techies. The race is on!
Screen capture of Microsoft's new Virtual Earth 3D