Agreed, but I think that program is Layout on steroids.
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Trimble entered into an interoperability agreement with Autodesk long ago. Encouraging file extensions like .skp and .dwg and .rvt to hold hands and play happily together in the big BIM sandbox is the mutual objective of these two very large and very successful corporations.
Autodesk currently has a market cap of $45 Billion with $5 Billion in revenue, Trimbleâs is $13 Billion with about $4 Billion in revenue. They are both giant companies with aims to integrate the A/E/C/M/E/P industry into something resembling coherent. Note that Autodesk is a software company while Trimbleâs origin was instrumentation which is still their major focus.
While I do not see Layout going away any time soon, perhaps a good question to ask is where Layout fits into the bigger picture.
I still prefer using AutoCAD for my 2D drafting needs, but itâs such overkill for me. Referring to the original post, I am straining my eyeballs looking at those Trimble Drawing icons and wondering if itâs anything like this little program Autodesk acquired long ago called âAutoSketch.â I loved that program, but Autodesk killed it in favor of AutoCAD LT.
I am very curious to see where this effort goes. If I could go from 3D to 2D via .skp to .dwg without Layout being involved, I would be thrilled.
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I had a few years experience of AutoCAD LT in the late 2000s and I donât want to go back to AutoCAD or anything CAD-ish ever again.
Layout was a breath of fresh air for me, and it suited my needs of small scale domestic projects.
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Fine, we can agree to disagree on that.
Thanks for that. As someone who ran an architectural firm with over 40 years of experience Iâm pretty up to speed.
Others may not realize that Autodesk and Trimble are not necessarily competitors. Both are major players in big BIM, and I look forward to future interoperability enhancements. I have no problem with Trimble and .dwg getting very cozy together.
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Arrgh! These conversations drive my crazy because Iâve experienced something else that hardly anyone else has: PowerCADD. All the praise heaped on Layout for being not-like-AutoCAD is also true of PC. In fact, when I sit at Layout it feels very similar, except it doesnât have one tenth the capabilities, and, more often than not, sluggish to work with too. Having decades of personal experience in a drawing environment that is everything you like about Layout interface wise, plus all the feature requests youâve ever made for LO, plus snappy to work with makes it difficult for me to love LO very much. Iâve gotten it to do the job for me at times under the right circumstances, but I still jump out to PC when I get frustrated like this:
I canât be happy with Layout as it is because I know from first hand experience just how good the experience could be. Words donât cut it, and Iâm going to have to do a YouTube video.
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Please do.
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I´m curious about how this will export skp to dwg. Will we get proper linework instead of all broken lines? Will we get proper origo or random origo? Will we get tags to layers? Components to blocks? Will line style carry over?
If not I guess this effort will be a strange one, not connecting sketchup to dwg, but just replicating all the other autocad clones out there that has no other purpose than being cheaper than autocad. I have tried many of them, they often have feature parity with autocad, except being totally useless, because you cannot work fast, as there is no panning and zooming with mouse/trackpad gestures, you need to use the âpanâ and âzoomâ button. So that stops them all from working outside the hobby room.
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[quote=âateliernab, post:40, topic:230726â]
edit : I might add, weâve seen the problems with Layout, itâs not evolving very fast, itâs buggy, slow, you could find 10 threads here of people asking either a full restart or a deep revamp.
But it doesnât seem to be the main emergency for trimble, it only impacts SU pro users, and not even all of them, many of us barely use layout.
But a cross-software accessible by all trimble users might, in the end, mean a better development and maintenance. and I mean, we were asking for a full (Layout) rebuild, thatâs pretty much what they are doing, a CAD/Layout tool built from the ground up and (hopefully in the end) fully integrated. Why not.
Good Analysis ateliernab,
âFull Restart or Deep Revampâ for LayOut indeed! Is this perhaps a tacit acknowledgement by Trimble that LayOut isnât (or maybe even canât?) live up to our long expressed and numerous aspirations?
So if they canât really transform LayOut, they are going to build something new instead, âfrom the ground upâ? If this Trimble Drawing Tool can really replace LayOut with something fundamentally better, with full integration, then great ⌠but why did it take SO long? Is this Trimble finally admitting they need something newer and better than the old LayOut code? Trimble really needs to remake LayOut into a full function, state of the art, 2D/CAD modern production tool for the AEC industry, and if they want to name it something new, fine! Itâs about time!
Youâre reading to much into this Bill
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[quote=âDevine, post:93, topic:230726, full:trueâ]
I have to agree with many others - fix Layout please. If Trimble has access to resources beyond the SketchUp team, then use those resources to fix Layout and you will then have a tool to deal with dwg export. It does not seem to make sense to work on something new and different. Fix what you already have.
Hi Devine,
For some time I have been pondering WHY Trimble has not âfixedâ LayOut after all these years of user feedback. Seems to me it boils down to Canât, or Wonât.
I imagine the Canât argument might involve âoldâ or inflexible code that has been built up layer by layer, and is now difficult or impossible to revise without extensive excavation or a ground up rewrite, thus too expensive and/or just not worth it.
The Wonât argument probably involves the effort just not being a very high priority, with too small an effected user base or market share. And, see the Canât argument âŚ
So, maybe rather than admit the Canât or Wonât arguments, Trimble will just make something new ⌠itâs about time!
In Mike Brightmanâs latest video he seems to do quite a lot with a broken Layout.
oh yes â heâs got his fancy Condoc plugin that fixes Layout.
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[quote=âdesignnest, post:63, topic:230726â]
We paid for Sketchup pro, We paid for layout as part of it. Sketchup works and we get great models, Layout is awful and we cant easily or reliable get 2D construction documents out of layout. I just wish theyâd fix Layout, so we can actually use our models.
Perhaps LayOut is paired and sold WITH SketchUp in the Pro package precisely because few (knowledgable) users would ever buy LayOut all by itself? What price would the marketplace support for LayOut as an individual product with its poor development history?
Thanks for all the comments and discussions! Please note that we do read all the comments and will reach out to some power users for a more in-depth research interview shortly. We do take your opinions into consideration of the development and planning.
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Hmm, maybe $10 ? 
or notâŚ
Euhm, glad to hear it, I thinkâŚ
What on earth is a âpower userâ ?
is that in opposition to a âweak userâ ?
I think the opposite of a weak user would be a strong userâŚ
so the opposite of âpowerâ user would be a âtiredâ one ?
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I have to admit Iâve never tried it.