I have tried in vain to find a ready made layout file of UK electrical symbols. Thought I would import a DWG file with these and save as a Scrapbook, but that option was not available - and I read that I needed 2018 to be able to do this. I have now hit the problem of thicker lines in my model when open in 2018 - so sticking with 2016. I just want to prepare an electrical plan !
any ideas people?
Neil
Neil,
If you upload the dwg, I might be able to do something for you later depending how complex it is. Unless someone else does first…
Edit- It could back saved to 2016 LayOut version as just advised by @DaveR, that way you could open it in your current version.
I wouldn’t take this to mean an automatic incompatibility issue, just yet.
It could easily be a Styles setting (for edges) where the ‘profile’ options have been turned on, and are set to a higher value than what you’d like to see.
And then, there are also line weight values which are adjustable within layout that can be scaled down in all likelihood.
Hi Jim
I did experiment by reducing the profile setting from 2 to 1 - some improvement but still not as fine as I am used to. I will have a look at the line thickness settings too.
Will attempt a screen capture to show you the difference - need to remind myself how to do that !
N
Do you have Hardware Acceleration disabled in SU2016?
Thanks Jim
I have uploaded two screen shots
Neil
Hi Ian
I will try and upload the symbols DWG file - my problem is I don’t have CAD
so I cannot check the image
Thanks for your help (I’m a bit of a novice, but I have become quite capable modelling my house)
I will go back to the forum
Neil
FIA Electrical Symbols CAD Blocks 01.dwg (198.8 KB)
Here’s the electrical symbol DWG file -
cheers
Neil
Hi Dave
In SU2016 Hardware Acceleration is enabled
In SU2018 - I notice that this setting is now referred to as anti aliasing - it is on a default setting of 4 x
cheers
Neil
No. Those are different settings.
It is possible to fix the heavy lines in LO 2018 if you want but it sounds like you’d prefer to stick with SU2016 so there’s no point in fixing them. Import the DWG into SketchUp 2016 and go from there. You can send the SKP file to LayOut and make a scrapbook.
Forgive my naivety,
If there are several symbols in the viewport, they are not selectable because they are in model space right? So if a scene were saved as a scrapbook for example how would the individual entities be selectable in paper space?
You would need a viewport for each symbol?
My understanding is that once the geometry is imported - it can be ungrouped and exploded into constituent parts.
Ian, you can explode the SketchUp viewport and then ungroup as needed. Group the geometry for each symbol.
With the geometry exploded to LO entities the line weight can be adjusted with more control as well.
Here I’ve grouped each of the first two symbols.
Dear All
Very many thanks for your help with this - I have managed the DWG import now (I had made a school boy error - when selecting the DWG file to import - I had not changed the file type box!)
Dave I am still keen to solve the line thickness problem - but I will work with an expendable file and see if I can get 2018 working as I want it.
Brilliant Forum - many thanks for your trouble
I’ll be back !
over and out
Neil
Is any of the geometry grouped in SU beforehand, I explode the viewport but can’t access the geometry even if I ungroup. I’ve got to be missing something.
You might need to ungroup a couple of times.
Got the little blighter, you have to have the viewport set to Vector, of course. The viewport weren’t exploding properly. Silly me.
I didn’t think you’d be able to do it this way, that’s why I offered to do it.
Thanks for the help, something else learned.
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Hi all, I did want to point out that this is one of the use cases that we wanted to address with our latest release. In LayOut 2018 you can now import the .dwg directly retaining hatches, line types and the text.
Attached is a screen shot of what the file looks like in cad and once imported into LayOut.
I imported the dwg as native LayOut entities with the Model space only option as the original file does not have anything in the paperspace.
Let me know if you want any additional clarity on how to do this.
Trent
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