Please explain. I have tried everything I can think of to remove the opaqueness of that box and nothing has worked.
Trying;
If you choose your dimension text to be placed either above or below the line it will not obscure the line but the effect of the text ācuttingā the line relies on an opaque text background.
In metric countries it is standard to put dimension text above the line.
I have always had the text placed above the line.
Do you mean you are having trouble in cases like this:
By default, the dimension is placed in the middle of the line. But if you choose to move it close to one end of the line, it does start to obscure things. But you might kind of expect that, mightnāt you?
As no one else has yet bowled in to agree that this is a shortcoming, I wonder whether this might only be of value to a small number of people?
Thank you for the suggestions. Iāll mess around with these setting again and see if I can get a better result.
For my part I would like LayOut to have controls to place the āaboveā dimension text nearer to the line, and to minimize the padding inside the text box.
7 Likes
I can appreciate that this is a personal preference, but when my architectural drawings start to get very crowded as they often do, I want to make things as easy to read and understand for the owner and GCs as possible. Iām not a fan of Autodesk, but they did understand the importance of allowing customization to the utmost in AutoCAD.
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I absolutely agree with this!
Yes, but when we were using AutoCad I was perhaps the only person in our firm that had a clue about how to do that. Using DWG files ānot invented hereā was a major pain as the customizations varied hugely between firms so I had to spend time correcting mistakes others had done or files received from our consultants. Today the same applies to BIM apps. A tick in a box in the fourth dialog opening may have a drastic effect on things in the whole project (unfortunately the Archicad folks donāt monitor this forum).
Completely understand - one of the reasons the number of sheets I produce has increased is to counter clutter.
For the type of project I do Iāve been religious about limiting my documents to A3 but because of the increase in number of sheets and feedback from builders and other consultants Iāve gone to A2 for some of my documents and the extra space is liberating!
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The same thing has happened to this Topic that has happened to virtually every other Feature Request / Wish List topicā¦
It starts with a simple list, then becomes a discussion about one or two items between users. Often with suggestions of workarounds.
I suggest we think of a different method for recording feature requestsā¦perhaps a shared Google Docs spreadsheet or similar.
Something comprehensive that we can suggest changes on and then formally submit as a combined user feedback. We could also thnk about prioritising FRs.
Iām not sayng the discussion above is a bad thing, just that there have been many good discussions on SKP and LO improvements that have probably obscured what Trimble staff might be needing to hear.
Sidenote : it would bre lovely if this forum interface would allow us to collapse repliesā¦having everything expanded all the time makes the original discussion very hard to follow.
11 Likes
Very constructive and relevant comments AK SAM!
Yep, went very quickly down the rabbit hole
A simple feature voting list would be goodā¦ not sure if that can be setup hereā¦ maybe a google form?
The thing to consider though is that in some cases someoneās experience of Layout that leads them to consider something a limitation that requires a fix, improvement or new feature, will be a lack of knowledge of how the tool/feature works or that there are reasons why it is what it is.
I think it would be misleading to have such perceived limitations on a list without it being noted or discussed that how the tool/feature works is not necessarily a limitationā¦
A great idea if workable. It would mean a lot of coordinated effort. There would be the question of what goes on the list and how to record degree of interest in each item so as to prioritize. I wonder if enough people would join in to make it significant enough?
In some ways we already have a similar system with Likes. I deliberately split up my post into individual items (fearing someone would tell me not to double post!) so that each could be separately endorsed or opposed.
Certainly no expert in Google Forms but just set up a quick prototype
Toyed with using Google Forms to force some response to design options with my client teams 
Anyone an expert on Google Forms?
Here is a link to the form on my GDrive in a public folderā¦
You all all invited to tap in a couple of answers to see if it works ok
Collaborators can be assigned editing rights to so it can be supported by a team
Worth a try?
PS this is just a test formā¦ also the responses are anonymous
I just voted. Seemed to work.
1 Like
Nice example. A poll is a great way to gauge feedback if enough users adopt it. Iām pretty sure this forum can do polls.
Iām thinking that the prioritisation can come a bit later, once we have a reasonable list of Feature requests/improvements to vote on.
The list needs to be filtered (removing those that already have workable methods) and maybe organised into simple groups (eg , Interface improvments | Import/export | Formatting)
A lot of good ideas were collected in the LayOut Petition thread. EG , by @ArayaCAD @ajharlan & plenty of others existing already in the FR category, including this thread.
I donāt know what internal process Trimble have for recording and sorting feature requests.
I just fear that great ideas for improvements are getting lost though lack of articulation, lack of perceived popularity, getting deraiiledā¦and this forum software being less than ideal for these sorts of discussions. Do we need to take on a community-led approach?
1 Like