Apologies for my indignancy Richard – I was riled by your suggestion that I was zoomed in.
I think that my workflow is actually very similar to yours – my SketchUp models are very basic and I add a great deal of detail in Layout.
I accept that a 1mm wide rectangle is difficult – in 2024 I can just about get the corner snap points on A3 zoomed to page extents (on a 27" monitor).
I have to say though that in 2023, whilst you can grab the rectangle anywhere, I don’t think it’s perfect getting the required corner of the rectangle that is 1mm wide to snap to another object – sometimes it’s the opposite corner that snaps first.
Something that small – in 2023 – I would have been zooming in a little myself.
Yeah, I did trial that, but dropped it as something was problematic, can’t recall now what it was! That and I do export a DWG (for sketchup) so I can quickly model up to do renders of facades.
Though, you have me thinking! I could export a PDF and outline stroke in illustrator, then export a DWG, I might revisit!!!
I will add another strong opinion that the new inferencing in Layout is really disruptive to my developed workflow, and I’m not seeing any real improvements. All sorts of auto-inferencing appears to be gone, aligning corners of objects, edges, etc. Also, dragging copies of drawing elements behaves strangely, where they’ll sometimes move in a cardinal direction and sometimes not quite aligned with the intended direction.
I appreciate the reply Paul, and the link to Mike’s video. I generally agree that much of the upgrade to '24 has been great… I’m just not seeing it currently on the LO side. Probably just a case of old-dog, new-tricks… I’ve always felt very comfortable working in LO and found it to be quite intuitive and effective, which I know many people don’t. The changes to the inferencing system seem cumbersome at this point, and slow down my intuitive snapping… like dragging one element’s corner to align with a different element has always auto-inferenced, and now you need to manually set the inference point to that corner. Personally, I find that kind of stuff annoying, but so it goes.
On a glitch-centered topic, when I turn on the experimental engine, my LO screen goes black. Totally unusable. Anybody else experiencing this?
These are my issues to a tee! Previously, moving and connecting objects was a NO thought operation, now I have to think about the process, in lieu of my thoughts staying with the design!
This is particularly relevant when moving the handle to a corner and trying to move objects along a forced axis (+shift), the object quickly moves from its location to way off the line it was meant to flow along, like crazy behaviour!
I’ve been preparing a Layout Only (now models inserted) document of 50+ pages over the last month, so I’m totally up with this new inferencing, but I can second my first posted reaction! This new inferencing is seriously broken, functionality should be of benefit to your workflow / process - not an interruption to it!
If I understand this how I think you mean Aaron – you don’t have to manually set anything.
Just hover near the object’s corner, or mid-point (or centre point if the object has a fill) and when you click down the those snaps points are set and used.
I think Aaron is suggesting, as you’ve referenced, that this is manually setting the inference!
Say for example, in the days before it was broken; click anywhere and move, the exactly same outcome as your example would be achieved by native inferencing. But now we have been tasked with a second step, that of collecting the inference before moving!
My argument is that this change is indefensible, Paul you may like it, but for Myself and Aaron, it’s now just broken. I’m certain, we both understand the new way we’re being forced to work, but do we agree with the change that adds work - NO! For me, I’ve noticed that in a Layout design session I get a lot less done and maybe around 10% from '21-'24!
Yeah, I’m struggling to understand why this was implemented, seems more like a backward step! If this was the original inferencing, we’d be arguing for a change to match the old!
Essentially its a downgrade, as moving the little thingy whatsy in the middle to the inference you want to capture, is essentially what we are doing now. Why wasn’t that enough to achieve this new functionality, sure it takes a second longer, but essentially the same as now!
Layout 2024 feels a lot faster and more accurate than previous versions to me so a ton of work must have gone on behind the scenes to make those changes. Maybe whatever was changed required a different snapping solution, in which case it seems a tiny price to pay.
I’m not certain the change to the inferencing model made any change to the speed of LayOut itself! The change was reportedly to make the workflow of SU / LO match, what was lost in this thought process, one is a 3d space tool, the other a 2d page layout tool. Native auto inferencing is common to almost all 2d page layout tools!
YOU SHOULD ALSO CONSIDER USING ALL CAPS! I THINK IT REALLY HELPS TO EMPHASIZE YOUR POINT! ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU USE IT FOR THE ENTIRE POST!
(But seriously I had a colleague who always sent me emails in all caps and he didn’t understand that it came across as screaming - he was a draftsman and just always had his caps lock on for adding notes in AutoCad and wasn’t even aware…)
I notice something. When you need to move something referred to corners or quadrants, it’s faster than before. You pick and you move. But when you need to move from anywhere else, it’s a struggle. The main problem however is in the precision. 9 times on 10, I move something slightly next to the corner. I don’t really understand why it happened. Moving something base on the center point in one step is now impossible. Maybe eventually I will find this tool efficient but for now, it’s only struggles, frustrations and certainty not precision.
The system needs tweaking and refinement and I have been brining my experiences to the attention of the SketchUp team – I will concede though that previous system where you could grab an object anywhere and it’s corner or mid-points would automatically snap to another object’s corner and mid-points was good.
I have the complete opposite, the drafties of the company whom I do work for, can’t determine if they’ll use uppercase or lowercase. Their drawings can become somewhat messy!
