Let’s say I am using two scenes in SU for a pair of stacked viewports in LO. Then in LO I lock the two separate layers that contain the viewports so things don’t get messed up. If I am then working in SU and update one of the scenes having inadvertently moved the view position, my LO stacked viewports get misaligned. (I will sheepishly admit it took me some time to figure out what was going on.) Self discipline is great, but is there any way to “Lock” a scene so I have to go somewhat out of my way to screw things up?
Thanks for your ideas.
No, only groups and components can be locked.
The workflow is incorrect. Do not work in SU on a LO viewport scene page.
Make a dedicated “Work” or “Edit” scene page, whose camera position is always expected to change and it doesn’t matter when it does.
(My default template has 3 starting scenes, “Thumbnail”, “Print” and “Work”. Each has it’s own [very different] style of the same name. Any scenes for animation or LO are added to the page set later. But I always work in the “Work” scene. And when I wish to update the model thumbnail, I’ll switch to that scene, open Model Info > File and check the thumbnail box, before saving. then uncheck the box, return the the “Work” scene and save again.)
There are extensions that allow saving and restoring cameras.
That might be a workaround for you.
Thanks for the advice. I am still in the fairly steep part of the LO learning curve. It makes sense to set up the scenes that will be referenced and not change the views. I do work with styles and shadows on established referenced scenes to get the look I want in LO, and often need to adjust the section plane location to see exactly what I am looking for. I will just need to adopt the discipline of not moving the view location once established. The extensions look helpful.
Thanks
Also- What is your “Thumbnail” scenes used for? I searched the forum and did not find anything.
Again, thanks tot the generous help.
Eneroth’s Camera Memory tool is nifty for exactly copying a camera setup from one scene to another, if they are a LO stacked pair, and you need to change both. You’d set the the first, (update the scene) then use the tool to copy the camera to the second of the pair (and update that scene.)
It is basically a saved camera position, and a specific rendering style (both named “Thumbnail”,) for controlling how the file thumbnail looks.
The file thumbnail (written into the file itself,) is what you see in the File Explorer if you have the view set to any of the “icon” settings. It is also used to display models on the online 3D Warehouse picklists, and in SketchUp’s internal Components browser panel.
The switch (checkbox) is in the File panel of the Model Info dialog.
It is labeled “Redefine thumbnail on save”.
When checked, whenever you save the model, the current view (of whatever scene page is active) is written to the thumbnail attribute in the file’s header.
But having the checkbox always on, results in wild changes in the thumbnail. So, (a few years ago,) I wrote a plugin that that simplifies using a “Thumbnail” scene. SketchUp had bugs (at the time) that would not allow it to work properly, but I think the issues have since been fixed. (I’ll try to process it, test and get it posted soon.)
… and the same goes for the “Print” scene. It is a saved camera position and a print specific black and white sketchy style for printing, that I only update when I need to change the print perspective.
When I print, I switch to my “Print” scene.
OK. will try Eneroth’s Camera Memory. I am often making multiple option scenarios and would like identical camera positions, but could not figure out how to do it.
I find printing from SU to be so fussy and difficult to control that I just send to LO, even for quick check / progress prints.
Thanks for the help.
If the scenes are in the same model, you can just update the camera for the scene that is messed up, no?
I think that once you have changed the camera position and updated the scene, there is no way to undo it and get back to the exact position of the scene, and that will misalign the viewport image in LO. Using the extensions mentioned above may solve the problem.
Yes, but if you made 2 separate scenes in SU, that you were using to stack viewports, you can, and should be able to untick the ‘camera’ box on the messed up scene, click over to the good one, then click back to the messed up scene, tick that box again, and things should go back to normal… or at least, the 2 should align again in LO.
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You might give some thought to updating scene in the Scenes window. That’ll pop up a list of things to update. If you’re paying attention, it might remind you to untick the box for Camera so you don’t modify it in the first place.
Good trick if both scenes shared the identical camera position originally. Thanks
This does the trick I think. If the camera location box is unchecked after a scene is set up in an orthogonal view in Scene manager, I can go back and adjust layers, styles, fog etc… without inadvertently messing with the alignment in the LO viewport. Thanks
BMike is correct. You can also quickly align several scenes at once. Select a scene, choose your camera view, then in the scene manager shift select all scenes you want to have that same view. Then deselect the camera view then re-select it. Now all those scenes will have that same camera angle. You can do this for all parameters in it takes all of 2 seconds to do.
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Sketchup also has its own built in ability to copy and paste camera info (as well as other data):
MENU: view/scene tools/camera.
So if one of your scenes is as it should be, you can copy the camera data from that scene and paste it to the other using the “scene tools” and they will then match again.
That is not a native SketchUp feature. Must be an extension.
@DanRathbun is correct. This is not native. It comes from Didier Bur’s Scenes Tools extension.
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Once I discovered this my time setting up CD’s and shop drawings dropped dramatically!
Sorry for the confusion, as I automatically update all extensions with each new release of SU, they integrate so seamlessly that I forget they are not part of the core SU tools. Anyway, it’s still a good option to install to help with these issues.