The thing is that Sketchup is as powerful at 2D as it is at 3D.
I draw my 2D drawings all in sketchup and use Layout to dimension them, insert leader and text, page them and print them.
However Sketchup isn’t a good drafting tool if you require linestyles so this sort of task must be performed in Layout…
And Layout is very inneficient at drafting.
Now the discussion as come a long way and I’m a bit late to the party, but even if we live in a 3D world, 2D drawings are there for a reason.
Also, you don’t write in 3D.
A project is a mix of information and knowing when it requires 3D or when it requires 2D is not as easy as it seems.
Layout+SU combo is an excellent way of presenting 3D models. That’s what I love about it, it’s also capable of presenting 2D models, wich I also find very useful, however, having hybrid information, wich is standard and requires necessarily that you draft in LO is dreadfull in the LO+SU workflow.
This is mainly for the following reasons:
- Lack of speed on the conversion, handling and management of 3D viewports from complex sketchup models;
- Sketchup’s inability to produce linestyles other than color and width in vector mode wich demands drafting in LO;
- LO’s unintuitive and inacurate aproach to 2D drawing methods though they look good (when you’re finally done with it);
- Finally the hard to use CAD exports wich don’t facilitate on the drafting side of things or even on the integration of LO+SU as a complete solution for the AEC workflow.
SU+LO combo would nail the market altogether if any of the above would be fixed or revamped somewhere on these lines:
- Instant loading of complex models into viewports (I’ve suggested this);
- Complete Linestyle ability inside sketchup;
- Drafting intuitivelly with Layout (I’d love that LO would emulate standard SU drawing and modification tools)
- Perfect CAD exports.