The thing is that I believe that, when it started, Layout followed the idea behind sketchup. A simple 3d tool to create simple and fast presentations in a world dominated by 2D cad, which, honestly, noone understands but architects.
As a simple presentation tool for sketchup models where simple annotations and dimensions could be added, a title block could be added to each page and some easy scrapbooks would make it look professional Layout wouldn’t need much actually. After all people were drafting in CAD, then would present things in Sketchup, but never would abandon CAD.
So, Sketchup and Layout were meant to be sidekicks, managed by Google.
The problem is that they are fun to work with and when I first saw that Layout could present scaled 2D sketchup scenes, create dimensions and annotations, when I understood that sketchup could create sections and I learnt about the Section Cut Face plugin, I opened my eyes and ditched away 2D CAD.
I guess many of us followed the same logic and Sketchup+Layout started to be pushed beyond what they were meant for.
Sketchup, if you remember well, wouldn’t cope well with big buildings. Nowadays it does, but it had to evolve.
It was under Trimble that 64bits came up. Our computers got unchained in Sketchup. It can handle more geometry and more textures now. I can now work with shadows turned on with only a slight wait, and there’s no building it can’t handle… (Though it still can’t handle trees, or heavy realistic chairs, but that’s what render proxies are meant to do.)
The basis is still there: intuitive and fun and accurate with an incredible inference system in 3D. Much better than 2D CAD imho.
In the meantime Layout had already been created for Sketchup thinking in Sketchup as a sidekick and not as the main basis for our architectural work.
So, the real problem for Layout was a mismatch between reality (what the users started doing with it) and intention (being a fast presentation tool for simple sketchup models).
Considering that now, what users want, is a full featured and truly pro solution for presenting 2D output all the way to construction documentation. I think a full revision of Layout should be implemented. However, this revision should go so deep that it would probably be better to have a new addition to the Sketchup Pro package called Documents (or whatever).
Sketchup would have:
- Sketchup - for 3d models;
- Style builder - which I never used in my life;
- Layout - which I’m forced to used but isn’t exactly what I need.
- Documents - which wouldn’t follow the Layout logic of beautiful presentations but a pro logic of immaculate tools for construction documentation and 3D model data extraction.
Maybe layout could also be documents, but I think that would require a massive backstage change and some feature drop in terms of viewport handling.
I have a suggestion that I’ve tried describing before: what if Layout would loose the 3D viewports and would stick to a 2D image of the sketchup viewport?
I’ve noticed that a very complex 2D drawing in sketchup (the equivalent to a model section with full details) renders in a fraction of a second in Layout, while the same output rendered directly from the original sketchup model, takes seconds if not minutes.
So, this means, the solution for Layout could be to have Sketchup convert the 3D scenes into 2D drawings that would open in a new kind of Layout viewport that could not be orbited around. Updating it would mean a regeneration of these 2D drawins and not a full 3D model inside a viewport.
Then Layout would be fast and useful for our standard architectural output and development team would be able to focus on tools for drafting, annotation and data extraction.
Sorry I couldn’t write a simpler post but I had no time for that…
I made a post, even more complex than this one, that would describe these 2D viewports: