Hi there,
I am a new user of LayOut and, while I have watched a number of tutorials and done a lot of searching, I cannot seem to find a way of seeing the back edges of my model in Layout - where they are showing beautifully in my saved scenes.
Does anyone know a way of switching this on - or even a workaround that may be handy?
See attached pics LayOut screenshot shows no dotted lines, SketchUp screenshot shows them beautifully.
Thanks
Back edges are a raster thing so the style for the scene needs to have Back Edges turned on (make sure the style is updated) you need to have the viewport set to render as Raster. Back edges don’t show in Vector or Hybrid because those render methods are designed to show only vector edges.
What is it that you want to show with the back edges? Most likely there’s a better way.
Oh, this is such great advice, thanks so much! Behold, I selected ‘raster’ and verily my back edges appeared! Sadly, when ‘hybrid’ is selected the lines disappear once again. So much for lovely sharp lines. Not to worry, better to have them than not.
The reason for wanting to see them is that I work for a kitchen company where the in-house style for our cabinetry plans is to show the carcasses below the bench/countertop space. This means we can pull out any dimensions as needed so our client can understand exactly what they are getting and our factory can build it too.
Many of our designers use AutoCAD where this is a time-honoured option, but SketchUp is a lot cheaper! I was hoping I would be able to perform the same function without having to shell out for the privilege.
Ah, but stay, damsel! Thou mayst do what thine heart desires. 
Instead of using back edges which, even if you could show them in the Vector or Hybrid render modes they wouldn’t be pretty.
Instead you can manage it differently and get vector linework throughout. Are you really using Sketchup 2020 or have you upgraded to SketchUp 2021?
Right you are - version 2021 it is - I just couldn’t be bothered checking when I signed up for Community and had a burning question to ask.
I thought perhaps another work around might be to use section planes and layer a few scenes up so I could have the carcasses in a very fine line and gradually work up to the thicker outline of the benchtops and upper cabinetry. Alas this option is unappealing as it is labour intensive.
Does something like this look like it would work. This is admittedly a simple example that I threw together to show you. Not a section plane was harmed in the making of this. Only four scenes in SU for this (and you probably don’t need all of these. I just did it to fill the page.) Plan, front, side and 3/4 perspective.
YES!! That looks perfect! May I know your methods?
There are a few different ways this could be accomplished. The basics involve assigning a dash style to the tag for the cabinet outline. In this case I wanted to represent the toe kick but I didn’t want to show any of the internal stuff of the cabinet so I created an additional 2D object; a rectangle with a line drawn across it for the toe kick line. I put it on top of the cabinet but it could as easily be down on the floor or even above the counter top. It has been given its own tag as you can see below.
I set up a single plan view scene in SketchUp.
Then in LO, I positioned the viewport for the plan view and set the scale. This viewport shows the countertop only and is rendered as Vector. The viewport is on the Default layer here because I just used a simple paper template but in practice I would have layers specifically for viewports. I created an additional layer (Layer 3), made sure that layer was active, copied the Plan viewport, right clicked in empty space on the page, and chose Paste to current layer which put the copy of the viewport on Layer 3. For this viewport I turned off the visibility of the Cabinet, Counter top, and Pulls leaving only the Cabinet Outline visible. For that tag I changed the Dashes from Default to the dashed style, adjusted the weight and scale to make the dashes thinner that the outline for the counter top and done. The dashes are vector line work, they could easily be dimensioned. You could choose to show that layer or not in your PDF export.
Here I’ve moved that viewport off to the side.
Another option would be to skip the cabinet outline thing that I made and show only the cabinets with the dashes although you wouldn’t see the toe kick outline.
It would also be possible to do this with a single viewport using the Wireframe face style and giving the Cabinet tag the dashed style. This might add too much clutter in your drawing if your cabinets have internal details. Things like the edges of the inset door panels would show in wireframe, for example, but it depends upon how much detail you have put into modeling the casework.
Wow! It is just incredible what you have done for me here! This damsel is no longer in distress!!
I really appreciate the lengths you have gone to in order to carefully annotate this.
Thank you so much for this wonderful solution.
