Issues with layout has me investigating sketchup alternatives

LayOut
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Sadly most of my design studio have now switched from SketchUp to Vectorworks.
I’m trying to keep hold of the good parts of sketchup in our company workflow but I’m really the only “champion” left.

I think the issue boils down to the fact that sketchup and layout are designed to be versatile, conceptual design tools.
But versatility comes at a price; SU+LO simply doesn’t have the workflow enhancements or features of a specialised tool such as vectorworks architecture.

Aspects of SU+LO have been improving slightly in recent years…but so has other software been closing the gap by improving 3D prowess and user-friendliness. It took a very long time for LO to get dashed lines, and for SketchUp to get Tag folders. We still have so far to go.

I do some quite detailed drawing sets in LayOut - large models and files with many sheets, text, tables, etc. It’s when training others that I am reminded how complicated things can get in the SU+LO world, particularly if you do needed to align to a certain style of output. Users really get pretty frustrated with the model and scene management needed to produce good LO docs. Then add the general slowness of the LO interface and it really kills enthusiasm.

A user has to think about LO documentation when they create geometry and groups, add materials, tune styles, scenes, tags, layout sheets and dimensioning and schedules. You have to keep track of all these things in the model and be aware how one change can affect other scenes or styles. This actually becomes quite tough in a complex model, especially if you are importing 3rd party data or still in the conceptual design phase.

You basically have to create your own modelling and documentation system, from scratch

It’s best demonstrated in the fact that SketchUp doesn’t have tools like “wall.”
In a specialized architectural product, the Wall tool creates a wall object that is simple, but configurable with preset options. This is automatically documented all elevations, plans, sections and details, schedules and renders with appropriate information, pre-loaded callouts, hatching, lineweights, etc.
These days it’s probably a smart object (assembly) and will adjust itself to tie-in with other walls and objects.
A user in that workflow doesn’t need to think much about geometry, scenes, styles, or anything…unless they really want to.

To create such a complex wall assembly in SketchUp and LayOut requires a lot of thinking ahead. It’s expert-grade stuff. I don’t even attempt it.

So it’s apples and oranges.
Versatile vs Specialized.

There seems to be a move toward software companies creating a “family” of specialized tools, eg Vectoworks has Architecture and Landmark, Autodesk has Revit, Infraworks, Formit, Civil3d, etc.
Maybe SketchUp needs to package different professional workflows , eg how Adobe software has options to change the “workspace” (interface and toolset) to suit webdesigners or publishers or photographers… I like that idea.

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Most of the people around me are also VectorWorks users.
I wish SU would do better!!!
I think the datasmith integration with Unreal and twinmotion is really great.

The reason I am using SU+LO now is because it is faster than learning the others.
I had no choice…

I do know that LO would be a game changer if it were easier to use!
…Fast rendering of hybrids
…Dimensioning of arcs, etc.
…Compatibility with VectorWorks
…I wish LO had a plugin!

I’m a Mac user and Rudy is tempting …

↑I envy these plugins.

I really hope that SU+LO will be faster to process.
How about 2023ver…

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You made that happen on purpose, and you are using an old version of the application. Version 2022 forces the picture plane out of the object. Or what you show isn’t the only object in the model.

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This is what you have to do with all applications. At work I have had to do this first for AutoCad 2.5, then for newer versions of AutoCad when, for instance, paperspace sheets were introduced, then for Archicad and Revit. Even they aren’t ready for our workflows and standards out of the box.

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Well said (!)

I have simply decided that I need to make that jump to “Specialized” for my Architectural Projects.

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I can clearly see you are experiencing clipping issues from your screen shot. I do not have the same issues using SketchUp and rarely see any clipping as I demonstrate below. I wonder what is different about our two setups on this file? If you would like to share the file that clips for you perhaps we could explore why you are having this problem and solve it. I am curious why you are looking at this particular shape upside down, with the blue axis pointed down?

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Perhaps try FormZ and its version of Layout. FormZ has most of the SU plugins built in too.

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It is easy to make the view clip in SketchUp 2020: Just use the Place Camera tool in Parallel Projection to put the picture plane inside the object.

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" As most professionals know, Revit is an animal and is very hungry for money, time, and learning curves are out of control"
I am still learning SU (Pro) and Blender but work in Revit (20 years) Lumion and Twinmotion. I really like SketchUp for what it is suited to.
With respect to Mr. Sonder and others who persist using SU for most or all parts of their work, there are a range of other far more sensible products like VectorWorks, ArchiCAD, AutoCAD, then for the cheap products such as Chief Architect, PowerCADD (Mac only right now yes) and more.
Layout is merely a way to present models and trying to do detailing in it is a preposterous waste of time.
Even using your own library Scrapbook - it is tedious, slow, crashes, and frankly is a toy relative to a serious professional production tool.
In terms of Revit being hungry for money, time and learning curves - I agree and support the idea that the vendors are ripping us blind.
However that product if understood will make you money hands down over using a product like SU for the same work scope and further that you need not use SU for design but use Revit direct and phases for all stages that morph more or less seamlessly as you choose. I should not be bagging SU and I do not mean to because, I do like the product but I also recognise it’s suitability for architecture production relative to the main world players
I am sorry, but SU vs say VW or AC or Revit, you just have to say they are incomparable.
Also hint: Revit is a hosting beast and many tools actually suit and fit multiple uses not named as being for eg - elements such as fences and building recession planes use the Railing tool, cladding in 3D - can also use curtain wall tool, roofing or wall cladding can also use face based families with or without generic voids for cutting - you choose - it is actually straight forward, just not immediately obvious to beginners.
good luck

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With respect… Sonder is a successful architect and has successfully deployed SU+LO for a great many years and others, myself included, earn a living using SU+LO.

We’ve been there, done that.

Strongly disagree.

It might be for you but for others not.

We are professionals successfully deploying SU+LO.

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Comment deleted by author due to lack of interest.

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If we had inference locking with “shift” the two programs would feel more related to each other. If we had guides we could apply more of the same skillset as in sketchup.

If the same logic for geometry generation was used, that crossing lines break each other, and a closed shape got filled, then nobody needed to teach themselves a different paradigm in “Paperspace” than in Sketchup itself. Downside for this is of course that one would need to start grouping every singel piece of geometry one made, but still I think productivity would go up, just because one didn’t need to think about how to do things. Maybe a newly made shape automatically got its normally editable group made for it, just like it’s now auto-joining lines into “paths”.

I dont think the concept of an universal container with a gizmo controller is ideal, because it makes little sense to rotate a dimension object.
A move and rotate tool would feel right at home, and you could opt to turn the gizmo off.

That each object, also a single line, is a special “group”, a path, in itself that you can double click on to get to edit mode makes for a lot of clicking. The versatility of this “group” is doubtful, as there’s no way to draw inside it, and deleting a line also deletes adjacent lines.

Its been demonstrated that there is no effective way to extend two lines to their intersection and get clean geometry.

Aligning two already rotated objects takes a lot of work-around prowess, but that thing is probably getting fixed.

Gesturing a direction and inputting a number works for lines. Try the same thing with an arc. It doesn´t work.

Try finding snap points beneath text bounding boxes. It´s a hit or miss at best. Sometimes you have narrowly placed dimension text on top of each other and need to adjust placement. Getting to actually select the right one is not as easy as clicking onto that text. You need to click onto a place where the other text does not also have a bounding box. Not easy to explain to a newcomer.

We need to be able to turn snapping off on viewport level, or on snap type level/ tag level, because Layout looking for lots of snap points contributes strongly to slow performance.

We need dwgs out of Layout to have the same geometric precision as dwgs out of sketchup, but with tags, components and origo. Two stacked viewports need to come in on top of each other in dwg modelspace.

But what do I know, its been clearly stated in this thread that its perfectly ok for new-comers to expect a few extra years of learning only to handle “paper space”, because some have already done this investment of their time.

Obviously it’s perfectly possible to use Layout professionally, I even use it to give building coordinates, but I think Sketchup would have more success with a Layout solution that did not have so much of its own separate learning curve. 2D should be one dimension simpler than 3D

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I’m too old to play these games. Accusing me of this knowing that the program has this defect can only prove that the sentence Barba non facit philosophum is true. Hmm… I’m using an old program… I’m using what I have, and I’m not going to pay for “new” versions, which don’t bring anything new, apart from problems with logging in with the eyes, as evidenced by a lot of posts on this forum. Well, unless it’s all my posts as well as those that talk about clipping.

Yes… I hid the Death Star. And even if it were, it doesn’t change the fact that the program has a bug and Trimbe has been ignoring this fact (and users) for years

So… You write as if it’s a function of the program and not a bug, and a reproducible one at that. This only confirms my opinion about Trimble which does nothing but extort money from users. Sorry to disappoint you but I didn’t use “your” method of “enable clipping”. The problem occurs frequently when working with perspective off. Just rotate the model and voilà. And it can be such a simple model, not a mile away. Probably it has to do with “your” method.

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It sounds from this thread their are a number of “professional” folks who are highly dissatisfied with Sketchup, Layout and Trimble. And are very sure of several products that are more suited to their requirements.

My question is; Why are you hanging on here? Many have investigated and apparently found better options. Perhaps it is time to move on from our “hobbyist mentality”.

Still waiting for someone to post a sample of a troublesome file.

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Forgive me if I am not understanding…

Doesn’t Layout have inference locking with shift…?

I offset - but yes guides could be useful.

I disagree with you.

Doesn’t this happen if the geometry has fill enabled - I for one prefer that shapes have the ability to not automatically fill.

Sometimes I do.

I’m ambivalent - I don’t mind the gizmo.

Is my way above not effective?

Do you mean extra nodes?

I prefer my drawings to be clear and uncluttered so I don’t cluster my dimensions and text boxes such that they conflict with geometry.

This is not an issue for me.

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this is the Layout version of “inference locking”: its not really locking… so it will suddenly shift from horisontal to vertical for no particular reason. Also magenta lines, extensions of at an angle lines does not lock, so basically it doesn’t work.

Untitled

No problem with that.

Yes. adding lines is not extending the lines.

well it seems that performance is a theme for many people. One can always argue that then one should simplify what the viewport shows, and I would agree, its easy to show too much geometry by not restricting the amount of tags that are shown in each scene.

Still, I often get large files because of the way sketchup handles ifc imports, where the layer/tag structure is purged so one cannot really clean away unneeded geometry, like thousands of nuts and bolts coming from the engineer´s ifc. Lately though I ask for 3D dwg files instead, and then I can better control my file sizes, and through that the viewport performance.

One can also open the ifc in some other software, like vectorworks, save an dwg from there, and put that dwg into sketchup. Then one have an “ifc import” with tags intact, and one can just delete the tags (with the objects) that are irrelevant for ones own work.

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Interesting conversation, which I have followed closely as I do all of these “what’s wrong with Layout?” discussions. I am an architect designing and drawing quite complex high end residential projects. I do everything start to finish on Sketchup/Layout. I have read all of the frequent commenters, teachers, video producers and book writers on here and slowly I have developed a work flow for Layout that does the job for me and produces documents I am proud of. However….being truly honest, I know that the reason I am able to produce these Layout documents is the many, many convoluted and rather odd workarounds I have learned over the years from these Sketchup/Layout sages. I’ve become pretty accustomed to them but if I stand back a bit—or read through a discussion such as this one—I realize what I’m doing every day doesn’t make a lot of sense in this day and age. I respect those sages who have come up with these rather ingenious workarounds, but why, really, hasn’t the software evolved so they are not necessary? The struggles over Layout seem to have polarized on this forum such that someone writes in complaining and a familiar chorus springs into action defending the software. The first line of defense is always that the complainer is not using the software correctly and the second line of defense is that, gee, I’m doing great and professional drawings with Layout so what’s the problem? Often the complainer does not know their way through and around Layout, but is that really the point? Shouldn’t it be a little more self evident by now? I no longer have a large staff, but, as one commenter adroitly pointed out above, I can’t imagine trying to teach this software to an assistant. Stacking layers because there are no real line weights, turning off layers so the dimension tool can find the point on your model you are looking for, working in pixelated raster form because the thing can’t handle hybrid: whew! Even the latest additions such as the auto text enabled drawing symbols, which by the way I am so happy to have, require an astonishing amount of dexterity to use, with all that grabbing and clicking and adjusting of arrows. One of our brightest Sketchup teachers has even issued a video on how to hide the arrows on these symbols: great to learn and I appreciate the help, but why wasn’t this solved inherently in the software itself?

Anyway, I love working with Sketchup and I even love Layout, now that I really do know how to make it work, but I’m not stubborn enough to deny that something is not right with this picture. I sure don’t want to shift to another drawing software package and I sure would love an overhaul of Layout that made it a fully professional partner with Sketchup.

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You need to adjust your “field of view”.

I don’t get this even zooming in very close to small details.

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In general, my response to threads like this, is that you need to look at your process. As some mentioned above I run a professional architectural firm of one, for 22 years now, using only SU and LO. If I can do it, anyone can. At Basecamp I gave a presentation on how my process works with the use of standardized templates for both SU and LO.

The other aspect that slows people down considerably in LO is trying to vector or hybrid render the entire model. There is no need to do this and it drastically slows the entire process. At Basecamp I got a group of 50+ people to generate Floor plans, Elevations and RCP’s for a sample project in 90 minutes of instruction time. The only way this is possible is to utilize both Raster and isolated Vector/Hybrid rendering. The average render time of those drawings was around 10 seconds. The key is having the templates from the start that you use on every project.

I think many people that want tools like auto door and window insertion are getting too focused on the actual process of drafting rather than the concept of really designing (where SU shines!). When I am in the schematic phase I keep my models really simple. Doors and windows are simple “pushed” openings with a flat plane of glass or a surface representing a door. This makes for very fast changes for the client to get through to a more final concept. Then in Design development the detailed door and window components are inserted into the openings. So the comment about cutting openings first is actually a part of my process that makes it fast. This is just an example - the same goes for cabinets, trim, exposed framing, material offsets etc. When I used ACAD back in the day, we used ADT which had all of that automation. I can produce a project now in a third of the time it would take us with ADT. I have several friends in the industry using Revit and it just can’t compete in speed. Revit definitely has its place in more complex large projects where it is required by the client or agency, but for residential and small commercial, I am confident I can complete a project much faster with more detail and a higher level of documentation than anything I have seen on Revit, Vectorworks and the dinosaur that is ACAD.

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I do mostly domestic new-builds and extensions, and Revit is not suited to them at all imo. Overkill for, as you say, all but the really big jobs, and aside from anything else, autodesk are insane for updates and bloating, I’d gladly wave bye forever but sadly work insist it stays. SU/LO is the perfect tool for this size of project no matter your discipline, if you get even a basic template made, it opens up a world of speed, removing repetition, which is a huge drain. Good thing about a template is it can evolve over time, you refine it and before you know it you can have every job consistently leaving exactly the way you want them every time. Satisfaction of the result will help sway most folk ime.

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