I request you add a dedicated word processer to the program, that has many basic functions useful for better text insertion. I think you would enable it with a text tool - it would expand into a window that you could create a text document with without borders, margins and the like, or edit text, it would import a variety of file types, then it would paste that onto the layout page.
The way it is now, if you have to change something, you have to do multiple clicking, and carefully or you will find yourself kicked out of the bounding box, and have to redo the steps to get back to text mode.
But why? We already have Open Office, Libre Office Microsoft Word and numerous other programs for this. What benefit is there to try to recreate this inside of a 3d modeler?
when I tried to use RTF imports it was not working properly. I dunno. It just seemed to me to be a cleaner product, one that handled all aspects of drawing plans in one platform. So I have to go to Word, Photo Shop, etc. and process images, text there, them Import them, manipulate them? Ok then.
That is how it is even in Adobe software. You use an image editor to process images that you import into other software, like InDesign or Illustrator or any of their web design apps. Expecting sketchup to include this would be unreasonable at the very least. Same can be said for text editing as that is built in at system level on every major OS.
Well duh, rich text format is not plain text. (Having LayOut convert rich text to it’s own text objects would be another feature request by itself. Might be something to consider if … big IF, … the translation is not too involved and a open source code library exists.)
We have enough problems getting drawing features implemented. Adding a whole other set of application features into a drawing app is just not feasible.
It is, for now.
However, I’d like it better if viewports could also insert linked referenced files of other kinds (in addition to SketchUp models) like MS OLE or OpenDoc, where double-clicking the object viewport launches the application registered for that filetype, … we then edit the file in it’s application (MS Word, or LibreWrite, whatever,) and save it, and when we close, we are returned to LayOut where the embedded object is updated.
In this way embedded objects are edited in their native applications and that external functionality does not need to be reproduced or maintained by the LayOut application development team.
As an example, double-clicking a table linked to a XLSX file would open it in the machine’s spreadsheet application (in my case LibreCalc, for others it might open in MS Excel, etc.)
The way it is now, double clicking in a viewport is considered ‘bad practice’, so we keep telling people not to do that.
For data, it is important that it is ‘up to date’ (up to data).
I would like the option to generate reports from within LayOut, instead of the hassle you have to go through now:
Open SketchUp model, Generate Report, download as .csv,
Update reference in LayOut.
