The Bigger the Better!!
I don’t think it will be rocketscience to make a adjustable (or bigger) window for document setup. In that case it would be easier to control(relink) my references.
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Nine years later, this is still how large the document set up window is by default.
I don’t understand how low-hanging UI fruit like this goes unaddressed year after year after year.
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Wow! It’s already been 9 years! I’ve stopped participating in the Beta forum because it’s become clear that almost nothing is done with user input. Apparently, shareholders prefer fancy AI features over finishing a program that’s already 80% perfect. This week, Justin Geis published a study that really should have been done by Trimble.
I’m patiently waiting for China to release a SketchUp clone with a consistent, coherent interface and the option to quickly create construction documents, including hatching 
(And yes… that’s a bit of a joke)
yeah, we know
looks like about 20% of users work with layout daily.
I guess they prefer developing sketchup, that 100% of us use, prior to layout then. I can’t exactly blame them for that…
I can’t either, but maybe more than 20 percent would use LayOut if it wasn’t borderline unusable.
I’ve got to a point with it that I can use it somewhat efficiently but explaining layout to someone who’s never worked with it is one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve ever had. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to say “yeah, it’s stupid that it works that way but just do this,” or “yeah but try this workaround”. Borderline impossible to learn. Borderline unusable. Runs about 100 times slower than the same complexity model in Sketchup. I don’t understand why. It sucks and I’m over it.
Not my experience Thomas
I can orbit around a millions of objects model in Sketchup in microseconds. Create a scene for layout that appears crisp and perfect. Zero lag, almost miraculous. Then a viewport of a 50k object model in layout, rendered at 144 dpi, lags about a second or 2 every time I resize it.
Then make a change to that model, save it, and wait 20-30 seconds for the live link to auto update a dozen or so viewports in Layout. Of course, any object that got merely breathed on now has broken dimensions and callouts.
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The live update link that only works when you open the Sketchup model from layout. Of course, no UI indicates this. It’s just an Easter egg. About 90 percent of the things that Layout actually does well are hidden Easter eggs.
But I think my original post in the thread is a great example. The document setup column width is such a nothing thing. Make the columns wide enough so that you can actually read the contents of what’s in them. I mean how many lines of code are we even talking about needing to be changed here to fix that?
But it’s for something that in isolation nobody cares about enough that it would actually move the needle for Trimble. It’s just a needle detail that sucks in a haystack containing 10000 other details that suck.
(I understand that I’ve misused the needle in a haystack analogy but I’ve gone too far and there’s no turning back)
I have been raising this specific issue and other annoyances with SketchUp myself.
The idea behind LayOut is, of course, fantastic. Still, it feels like a project where a certain direction was chosen at some point—one that, in hindsight, might not have been the right one. There’s no clear workflow (many features can also be handled within SketchUp), performance issues (which are regularly “improved” with quick fixes), and a lack of features you’d actually expect in a layout program. And who came up with that hatching tool? I can only hope that person has since been let go.
At one point, we had the opportunity to give a presentation as part of the Trimble Drawing project, which was eventually canceled. That really seemed to be heading in the right direction. I’m convinced that if SketchUp could generate proper construction documents, there’s still a market waiting to be tapped. If it were up to me, we’d finally say goodbye to LayOut and start something new—whether or not integrated into SketchUp, but with real layout features like spreads, style settings for dimensions and text, continuous text blocks, a table of contents, proper tables, hatching, and… okay, I’m getting a little too excited again…
We train a lot of teachers in secondary education—especially in the more technical subjects. There’s still a world to win if SketchUp can make that final leap. Because the 20% who say they use LayOut likely pales in comparison to all the people still working with AutoCAD—who can’t make the switch simply because LayOut is, compared to other programs, an inferior product.