This is the anything goes forum correct? Ok. I posted this but it vanished not sure if someone deleted it or I goofed somehow. Here's me trying again.

Does anyone have any experience bringng models from the free version of SketchUp to 3DGS? I just downloaded it to try to get back into 3D. The workflow seems straight forward. I was thinking if I produce anything useful I might try to make it available here in mdl format. I haven't touched 3DGS in a couple years so there is a knowledge disconnect now but I still hang around the forum.

I imagine there might be issues of what format to export from/to, mapping, texture size or some other issues so if someone has experience Sketchup>3DGS and wouldn't mind sharing it that would be great.

Just had a look at it, but never used it.
As far as I can see, you can export with the free version to DAE.
With the Autodesk Fbx Converter you can convert that format to fbx, which you can import into MED and save as an mdl.
Don't know whether it actually works, but this should be the way it goes.

Oops, sorry. I didn't get a notification of your response. I'll have to see. There is an amazingly active plugin community on the forums with loads of extensions. It may be I can find something and do a test. Can you tell me what the best / most reliable format to import into MED is (been away a while). Maybe they already have a plugin that goes to that format.

Also a possibly dumb question but is it possible to import some format in to be converted to WED blocks?

All mdl files can be imported as static meshes into WED, thus it becomes more or less the same as a block.

I've been using FBX (2010) to import models into MED. OBJ works as well, but FBX is better for models with more than one UV map, etc.

Thanks for the info.

One more clueless question. Does MED/WED respect instances of objects from other formats? ie in SketchUp you can create instances of objects. I am not sure if MED and I guess OBJ or FBX (if I found a way to convert these) would carry this information over or it would end up in MED as some huge file?

mdl has no instances afaik.