[FR] Support for line styling

[eneroth3]

Every day when working with imported DWGs made in other software I am very limited by not being able to see line stipple and line width.

It is also very limiting not to be able to easily produce proper drawings with different line styles, e.g. for plot border, fire division, thinner lines for less prominent objects such as furniture and scale figures, and the like in SketchUp.

Currently users have to rely on a complex workflow with stacked viewports in LayOut, and edges drawn manually in LayOut loosely on top of viewports with no link to the 3D model. This is very cumbersome and still doesn’t solve all use cases. In my view stacked viewports in LayOut is a hack that shouldn’t be needed in the first place. Also I think LayOut should be used for annotation and layouting; even abstract 2D edges such as plot borders and projections from behind the cutting plane belong to the model where these can be modified along with other entities all at once. These lines should also stick with the rest of the viewport when it is resized, scaled and moved in LayOut.

To implement this functionality in an intuitive and user friendly way I suggest a new concept called Edge Types. Edge types would work very similar to materials but instead of being a color or texture it would consist of line stipple, line width and line color.

These edge types could be browsed, created and edited in a window similar to the material browser that users are already familiar with. They can then be applied, or painted, to the model just as materials are (but obviously not to faces).

“Painting” a group or component with an edge type would have it cascade to child edges just as is already done with material. This would give users powerful control to quickly style large quantities o edge but also allow users to style individual edges if they want to.

The Edge Settings tab in Styles could be given an option to override all line display with the default line appearance, just as Monochrome setting does for Face Style. If a user wants to create a quick visualization without the techical drawing feel this could be used.

Lastly, I think this would be good for marketing. Often people ask why they should pay for Pro when Make does most of the job. This feature is essential for many professionals but more or less useless for most hobbyist and would fit perfectly as a Pro only feature. Support for edge styling has been requested for years and I think this could definitely be one of the greatest features added in many, many years. In my view far greater than dynamic components or solid tools (or both combined). This could be the feature of SU 2018.

[eneroth3]

Example of how a stair component could be drawn with a simplified 2D projection included for proper drawings when cut:

[jvleearchitects]

I am in complete agreement with your FR. This is very well presented and graphically articulated.
The addition of this feature would go a long way toward making SU even more competitive with CAD programs such as AutoCAD or Vectorworks. Hopefully Trimble will seriously consider incorporating this suggestion!

[maxB]

+10 → would be a very good addition to pro and very much needed by architects.

[rvamerongen]

+1

( 5+ more characters to accept my +1 )

[simoncbevans]

I’ll add my vote to this if it can be done.

[sjdorst]

I put a reference to this over in the 2018 wish list:

SketchUp 2018 Wish List

Great, detailed case for the addition of line styles: Credit to @eneroth3 for the detailed request.

And may I express my awe at your mock-up of the line type editor!

[eneroth3]

Thanks . You should see the mock-up of my terrain editing FR . Sadly I couldn’t get the video to show in the post so I hd to link it from youtube: [FR] Smarter Geo Location.

[Barbara]

Sorry, I’m late, just found this post randomly. (It’s still open)

OMG, eneroth3, what are you doing. 10x A+
Please go on …

… maybe as an Extension for pro.
It would be very appreciated to make theese line styles accessible for users, something like this:
–x-- --x-- --x-- to mark walls to be erased
–T-- --T-- --T-- to mark telefone lines
– E – – E – to mark electrian
– H – – H – to mark heating
— s – – s – for sawers
etc.

If it could be made to a Component the Attribut “ItemCode” can be added to list in Generat_Report for rough calculations.

That put’s it all together. Volume, Area, Lines means m3, m2, m.

Good luck!

[tpdes]

Frustrated that LayOut STILL does not implement custom line types (it does implement custom material fill patterns which I much appreciate!), I’m on a mission to encourage Trimble’s programmers to get on the ball and get this done.
Thanks in advance!
Thom

[Anssi]

I have asked this before: Why not add support for AutoCad linetype definitions (.lin files)? The world is full of them, many applicatiosn support them, and making your own in Notepad is relatively straightforward.

If ever LO is going to acquire vector hatching support, I would also like it to be through .PAT files.

[eneroth3]

That’s not a bad idea. Just as face materials can be imported as PNG, JPG and some other image formats line styles/stipples could be imported from AutoCad lin files.

[JQL]

1 more time!

[ewd]

Again, so so wish this could happen! It always surprises me how little Sketchup do in each update when there are features like this which would make such a tangible difference, especially for Pro users!

[RTCool]

Agreed. I’ve been used to all these capabilities in PowerCADD since the late 1980’s.

There’s no subtlety to line weights in SU. It’s possible to use layers to symbolize line weight in SU and later on pick those layers out and apply weights when brought back into PowerCADD, but it is a lot of work to set that up.

[Gjenio]

+1
this would bring skp to the next level. I would see line thickness and line style as propriety of styles though.
…And the ability for styles to be assigned to groups and components in the same way materials work right now. That means different styles at the same time.
That would also allow having different section fillings within the same skp model.

[MikeWayzovski]

@Gjenio

…And the ability for styles to be assigned to groups and components in the same way materials work right now.

I think only components, as components have the ability to ‘save as’ , the aplied style would be saved with them and groups are more or less ‘left behind’ when it comes to development.(Components now have ‘advanced attributes’)
Perhaps there could be a role for the StyleBuilder app for importing line types:
It is pro only allready
Somebody might use it

[eneroth3]

I see no reason not to add the feature to both groups and components while at it. There’s no reason to stop when 90% done doing something.

I prefer groups very much over components for everything that can’t be given an item name and be put on a store shelf, e.g. the building as a whole, its surroundings and architectural elements built on site such as walls and slabs. Having the building as a whole or the surrounding envirement clutter the in model component browser, as well as generating thumbnails for them when edited, makes little sense. However I’d also like to be able to use monochrome style for the surroundings and shaded with texture for the proposed building.

[MikeWayzovski]

@eneroth3

There’s no reason to stop when 90% done doing something.

Apparently, with the newly added advanced attributes, there is, groups are excluded from this. This has upset me when confronted with it, and puzzled. Perhaps the developers had no time to add those features to groups, or they have reason doing 90%
I always think of a SketchUp model as a Component, meaning the ‘model wrapper’ is the highest level of a component. These models have a style applied to the whole model, regardless of what it contains (raw geometry, groups, components) For now, we can’t save groups like we can components, thus apparently, the status of components is the same as the Model, whereas groups have the status of ‘special raw geometry’
I cannot see the use of applying (different) styles to any other edge or face (or group) in the model, I think it would look terrible, but some users might see that differently, though, I would say:wrap that in a component and give it a style
The shelf of a city developer could contain malls and skyscrapers, it is pretty much always the context which determines the naming and grouping in a model(component)

[eneroth3]

I would have wanted those attributres to groups too but can in a way understand they are component only. If you name something (its definition, not the individual instance) and apply attributes to it it makes sense to use a component.

Styling is an other question though. Often you group things that are related to each other, but not represent a single object. This could be a floor, an apartment or, as I said before, everything that isn’t a part of the project itself but just a backdrop. A group in SU have a similar role as a Layer in e.g. PhotoShop while a component better translates to a smart object (an embedded file). I don’t want to be forced to make these groups components and have them behave like components just to be able to style them. I think it would be very arbitrary to limit styling to components only.