I really need to know how to dimension ACCURATELY in Layout. It’s the most clumsy and inaccurate thing I’ve ever used. Are there osnap settings I don’t know about? Yes, my osnaps are on. HELP PLEASE.
I’ve used ACAD for 25 yrs, and this layout is ridiculously inaccurate.
Thank you,
Jon
Might need a little more information. How are the inaccuracies showing themselves?
I’ve been using SU / LO for ALL design and drafting for 6-ish years now and I’ve never had a problem with dimension accuracy. I use anywhere from 4-6 stacked viewports with notes and dimensions in LO.
-Craig
1 Like
If you are finding dimensions to be inaccurate, there must be something wrong in your setup or workflow. Turning off Length Snapping might be needed, maybe changing dimension precision to something more appropriate. Without seeing your LayOut file, though, it’s hard to say exactly what you need to do. It is entirely possible to create accurate dimensions.
Craig, thanks for the response. I’m trying to do 100% SU. For the most part it’s awesome, but things that I know are whole dimensions in SU show as 1/8", 1/16", things I rarely do in design work (ex: Floor to floor hts, etc.). It’s as if LO dims don’t find endpoints or even lines, but just “comes close.” I end up drawing a lot of leader lines to baby the osnaps accurately. Needless to say, there is no time efficiency in this. I am still learning SU Pro this year, but Osnaps are not good on LO.
Dave, thank you. Can you recommend a good tutorial or something? I search all over YouTube and can’t get these questions answered. Also, where is “Length Snapping?”
Thanks again-
Jon
Are you running the latest maintenance release of 2020? Have you tried it in 2021? I think LayOut dimensioning, especially in relation to section planes, got some love from the developers in the latest releases.
Yes sir, I updated to 2021 and was very disappointed that nothing seemed to change.
I should have written Grid Snapping. It’s at the bottom of the Arrange menu.
You might start with learn.sketchup.com
Perhaps you could update your forum profile? It says you are using 2020.
I have seen a number of improvements in 2021 or 2020 although I haven’t found problems with dimensioning for some years. It works well for me.
You would get a more specific answer if you could post a layout file that is giving you trouble. There are a lot of possibilities. How are you making your scenes for use in layout? If your ortho scenes get accidentally orbited a very small amount it can make dimensions go haywire as it snaps to different elevations in the model and pulls diagonal lengths. It is also possible that you have display precision turned down so far in in SketchUp that you are building your model with rounded dims and that the Layout dims are correct. All guesses without seeing a layout file.
1 Like
Thank you all for the response. I’ve discovered that a lot of it was in the Model. Growing pains, I guess.