It seems like it would be easy, I mean after all, vectorized images seem like they would convert so easily to a .skp or .dxf even. Isn’t that cute… But it’s WRONG!

So wrong in fact that it took me some weeks, toiling late nights, trying desperately to figure out how the heck to get this artwork from a friend into sketchup so I could put it on a blasted Mario style coin… Like many freelancers and those with friends with seemingly simple requests, I took on this challenge not wanting to spend any money, especially if I’m not getting paid. So I set off trying to figure out how to put this square peg into a round hole. As it turns out, Sketchup used to be able to do this natively in their free versions, and you will find plenty of videos on how to do that, with menu buttons that are no longer there… But since Sketchup 2016 they have since nixed this in the free version. And you won’t find anything in their Extension Wearhouse that will do it for less than $50. Through mountains of research, and many hours of trial and error, I finally figured a way to do this for free.

1. Go into Illustrator and open your image as a clear background PNG

2. Object > Image Trace > Make and Expand (Expand is important)

3. Right click object and ungroup

4. Object > Path > Add more Anchor Points (Do this a few times if you have a curvy image

5. Object > Path > Simplify (This turns the boarders into simple point to point paths)

Now you can export a DXF that CAD programs will be able to decipher correctly

6. Hit Ctrl-A to select all, or Select the parts of your object that you want to export

7. File > Export and choose DXF as the file type

8. Select Millimeters as the scale, Select Preserve Appearance option, and Export Selected Art Only

I used Free CAD, But it won’t let you export just the outlines you imported as a .dxf,

9. In Free CAD, select File > Import and select your .dxf file

10. Clean up any extra lines you might see

In my case similar copies of my outlines seemed to overlap, so I deleted the extras

11. Extrude your shape a tiny bit, just to give it volume

12. Now you can export as an .stl, File > Export Choose .stl as the format

13. No Into Sketchup we go to import our new .stl (Which is a free extension you all should have)

14. File > Import and select your new .stl file!

15. You will have to clean it up a bit, I suggest the free CleanUp extension (Does a lot of the work for you)

16. Then I erased all but the top layer of my extrusion so I could work with it as a straight imported logo, which gave me the flexibility to manipulate it in Sketchup in the manner I was most accustomed.

And there you have it, A Free, albeit arduous, method to get your AI file into Sketchup.

IF you have found another way for this process not to suck that is free, please let me know 😀