Layout 2018 - not up to par with other drafting software?

I agree with Novurba.

I’ve been using SketchUp for over 10 years and have not installed Acad for over 8. Line weights are a legacy throwback to B&W pen and paper drawings. You could say that it is even further back to Clay tablets and Sticks when Stone Masons designed Cathedrals… [on a side note; I still see Acad people using Model Space for annotating rather than using Paper space…That is a DOS Legacy. and I hated to have 3m letters in Model space, to scale correctly on a site plan. At the time Paper Space was so cool you could pick your sheet and font point size and never worry about it again]

There are many things I feel Trimble could improve on: Layer control; Freeze/lock a Layer and all objects in it; Section fills like Skalp [which seems to be dead]

2D modeling? The term is an oxymoron. Currently we have to Flatten everything and present it as if it were 2D. I get that. I’ve even had contractor’s tell me they don’t want any colour, just B&W. Then tried to put in a change order when they were the ones who clearly read the plans wrong.

We have to slowly train the masses to think the same as they see; in 3D-Colour :wink:

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Is there another piece of software that works with Sketchup to be able to document efficiently?
We recently had a company meeting to weigh the pros and cons of Trimble’s system for creating CDs and as much as we love Sketchup, layout is slowly eating us alive. Its getting harder and harder for me to defend layout to my colleagues.

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Autodesk release their roadmap for Fusion 360…

I’ve only used 360 a few times but one of the things that really appeals to me about it is that the development is super fast and that there are regular updates with significant improvements (based on user feedback / wish lists like this one). Surely Trimble could put something like this in place?

@slbaumgartner, as you say

I get that Trimble want to keep development under wraps but it does mean that users being left in the dark and subsequently disappointed that their burning issue hasn’t been addressed in a new release, with no information about when it might be resolved in the future or even that its on their agenda.

I’ve only just starting with Layout and it has a lot of room for improvement and performance before it can compete with the big guns out there.

I realize that Trimble/SketchUp are pretty tight lipped about development but it would be really nice to see some sort of road map or something that lets us users know what direction we might see in the near future.

When it comes to BIM and 3D, SketchUp is the best, is we could somehow couple that with a solid 2D document engine SU would completely dominate the architectural market within a matter of a few years.

Dassault came out with Draftsight a few years ago, basically a lite version of AutoCAD LT. SU and Trimble should be taking a hard look at this and in my mind could certainly learn something from this. Imagine if you had all of the speed and functionality of AutoCAD LT within Layout.

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Fusion 360 is one of the best pieces of CAD software I have ever used. Slick, polished and refreshingly awesome for something with Autodesk on the box. In my opinion its probably the coolest software in the Autodesk stable.

If Sketchup adopted some of their development methodology I would be happy. The future of software development has the users heavily involved from early on. Who better to test new things before they are officially released? Plus we will do it for free!

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@benoldays, yes certainly is pretty strong, it doesn’t feel like an autodesk product which is really nice! But its predominantly for product design. The point that a lot of other folks have made (and I agree) is that SU has a loyal following because its a seriously versatile product that can plug into a HUGE range of industries. You add the plugins you need to make it do what you want it to. That was one of the biggest reasons that I dropped Vectorworks 9 or so years ago; the app wasn’t ‘tailorable’ enough and there wasn’t much support or info from them if you needed to do something different. Also, the learning curve with Vectorworks was huge - it took me years to get good on it and I found that could output models and documents within a few months having started using SU / LO. I tried modelling in Sketchup and drafting in Vectorworks (using and imported SU model) but just found it a pain - it may well be better now.

While I really enjoy using SU I do (sometimes) find LO very frustrating because;

  • move / copy can be infuriatingly slow and inaccurate (as demonstrated by @josh4)

  • text handling is very poor (as mentioned by @designnest (there is so little control over text and the text totally reformats when you click out of the text box,

  • selecting the correct item on the page is very difficult as the cursor sensitivity is like having your hand in mitten, even when you are SURE you have clicked on the item you want something else gets selected!

  • updating documents with lots of scenes can take a huge amount of time

  • There isn’t enough ability to control the SU model within layout - @endlessfix, Im 100% with you on wanting to be able to keep the link to the SU model but to have more control. Having a scene for every single view soaks up a lot of time, clutters the model and makes creating LO docs take longer. When I used it last, Vectorworks had a FANTASTIC way of controlling what’s visible in viewports and I see no reason why the same thing couldn’t be implemented into SU / LO. The live link between the model and the page is essential - I definitely do not want just a static raster image to show views and i definitely don’t want to have to create scenes for every view I want to use. I use the viewports to generate callouts that are linked to parts in my model (as can be done in Vectorworks, Inventor, Fusion etc). The model is very much alive in my LO pages. I generate scenes with specific styles but no camera and then I define what view I need in the LO page space. Having a static image in place of a live model viewport is a poor substitute. Not to mention that when working on different systems with different monitors / plugin layouts that updating viewport cameras can throw your views out.

  • The section tool within SU doesn’t give users enough control and as many people have mentioned, Skalp seems to be dead which, if true, is a real shame :disappointed_relieved:. I use Skalp extensively and think (with continued development) it is a strong tool. But this can also be a little frustrating as having dimensioned a section view, if one makes any changes whatsoever (even just saving and updating the model) all the dim snaps disappear meaning that you have to endlessly re-dim sections. I used Fusion for a simple project recently and was amazed that all my section dims just updated with every save - and they were ALL accurate.

  • The raster view is not much use for anything other than visuals. I’m not saying it doesn’t serve a purpose but its just not accurate enough for drafting as opposed to visualising and the hybrid and vector views can be very slow to update on large files. Only being able to show hidden edges in raster is a serious shortcoming I think.

  • There is no way to link text and viewports. Fusion and vectorworks are very strong when it comes to this and both can auto-generate / auto-update names, scales, section numbers etc. Updating drawing labels in LO (given that text editing and selection are both clunky) take longer than it should and can result it my mouse getting launched across the room (when you think you are selecting a drawing label but you end up clicking into a viewport… :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: )

  • 2d drafting on the page space in LO is still not terribly easy due to the clunky selection and snapping. I end up making seperate models of items that can be 2d in Sketchup, importing and then exploding them which is a bit long winded. IOn the plus side, I am loving the ability to group items in LO and do scaled drawings :+1::+1::+1: - a step in the right direction.

__

There are (judging by my experience and the various posts and LO wish lists) still a lot of issues to resolve / things to improve in LO but I think a lot of that is down to the fact that Pro is reaching further out into different market places and being used for broader applications, by larger firms and on bigger projects. Despite my grumbles, I do think that SU and LO offers a very powerful, adaptable and reasonably priced set of tools that can be put to works on a huge range of applications. As other users have pointed out, having spent some time reading around, buying various books, running tests and refining my workflow have achieved some noticeable time savings on projects.

I see lots of people grumble on here about LO not being a ‘professional’ application, but I have used it ‘professionally’ and have generated ‘professional’ drawings that have earned money (for myself and the businesses I have worked for) and increased market share and profitability. My clients feedback has generally been very complementary and people have commented on how much better / clearer / the drawings and presentations are and how much seeing coloured views (iso / ortho / perspective / section) rather than flat line drawings has made complex projects easier to understand for clients and contractors alike.

Having drawn up a few things in Fusion I can say that while the modelling side of it is amazing, the drafting side of it lets it down too. There are several projects that I simply couldn’t have completed in the native drafting space of fusion that were easily achieved in LO. In order to get what the output I needed I would either have had to export images and use something like InDesign to format presentations or would have to export a ‘dead’ dwg / dxf to annotate in AutoCAD LT (shudder). I do however KNOW that the Fusion team are on the case with resolving some of the issues with the drafting space because they release and regularly update their development road map, :wink::wink: so Im keeping my eyes peeled…

I’d love to see / know what the future plans are for LO and SU. There are many points raised here that have been raised time and again on wish lists (some of them mine) and I’d love it if users were able to have more input into the application’s development - after all it’s the paying users that are funding the development and its the users who are applying it to achieve our end goals. I think if Trimble are listening, they should be acknowledging this a bit more and keeping users in the loup…?

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No you do not, I just added a NVME.2 storage device, put my OS on it, then changed my MB and processor. Windows is activated with the same product key I started with, no charge.

In the end we use it because we need it but it is far from perfect.

The need of it though is what justifies having Trimble on Layout with way more force than on Sketchup imho.

@JQL

YES, totally! There are too many long standing grumbles and complaints that just haven’t been dealt with…

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or stop LO, create a live linking w/ an existing 2D CAD package and focus on improving SU 8-]

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This is the best solution. We do not need to reinvent the wheel, we just need a plugin that links the SketchUp model with other consolidated software.

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@SketchUp3D_de @RodolfoST

Couldn’t disagree more… No CAD would do what Layout does. We need Layout but streamlined, not have to rely on CAD please.

We also need it to export to CAD flawlessly but that is another issue to add on top of the first one.

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Yeah I agree it is a bad idea, not to mention difficult. As someone who tries to cross pollinate software it never works as well as something built natively.

Layout just needs to be reconsidered by people who know what good documentation requires and some serious programming resources put on it for a year or two.

If layout worked as well as standard CAD packages it will literally take over small architectural practices. Sketchup is the most popular software at all the architecture universities in my country so grads are coming out fluent in it. The majority of local architects I know love it and use it during the design phase, but abandon it for other CAD packages during development, most of which are far more expensive than Sketchup pro.

Make Sketchup / Layout as efficient for producing construction documentation for an equivalent price and it’s no contest.

I just hope Trimble can see the gold mine they are sitting on.

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I agree. I’ve held my breath because of the natural bias of this forum.

My disappointment with various BIM packages I’ve tried over the years has been summed up by the old adage of “Jack of all trades, master of none.” When it comes to 3D modeling, their not the best modeler you’ve seen, and when you have to do drafting, they’re not the best drafting tools you’ve seen either.

I’m not wild about using a software package that’s mediocre at everything. That’s why I chose PowerCADD for 2D drafting, and SketchUp for 3D modeling, because I felt each was the best tool for their respective tasks.

What I want is a better way than DWG from PowerCADD to SketchUp and back again. Everything people currently like about Layout, I already have in PC. Everything on everyone’s wish list, I already have it PC. The ONLY thing Layout offers me that PC does not, is placing a live link to scenes in a SU model.

That wish isn’t far fetched either. A few weeks ago I had a long phone conversation with Alfred Scott, the developer of the Wild Tools plugin for PowerCADD. He has already proposed an open standard he calls Open Clip, which allows copy and paste from one program to another via the clipboard, thus avoiding DWG altogether. He’s already implemented it between PC and Form-Z, so he’s proved the concept. He stated getting SU views back into PC is a goal of his, but right now, getting everything updated to 64bit is occupying their time.

Making a better way for SU to play well with others isn’t as big a programming task as trying to reinvent the best 2D drafting program from the ground up.

Your problem could be solved with a batch export of scenes as vector files from sketchup (svg with colors, textures or gradients, dwg with background images, pdf files…)…

powercadd could also import a sketchup model and xref it.

In the meantime, there are users paying for Layout and it should work better.

I don’t want layout to draft, I want it to document. I do my drafting inside sketchup and there i have everything I need except linestyles which I learnt not to need so much…

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^This.
The less 2D drafting I have to do the better. I would prefer if all drawing/modelling work was done in sketchup and layout translated that information into the presentation format that I need, that includes line weights, line types, line colours etc. without the need for stacked viewports.

90% of what I do in layout at the moment is placing notation, symbols & hatches. All of which can be automated to a certain degree with a good sketchup model.

In my head if i’m 2D drafting over a sketchup viewport for more than 10 minutes i’m modelling wrong.

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My take on modelling is the opposite:

  • I model as sloppy as possible with the least amount of info I can;
  • I use stacked viewports and section cut faces to draft into (main lines and hatches);
  • I annotate, dimebsion make leaders in layout and draw the least amount of lines I can.

The most problematic stages of my process are the laying out of viewports because of viewport render speed; the difficulty of dimensioning off axis drawings (which i have a lot); room areas aquisition and dwg export.

I’ve managed to circumvent most issues. But these ones kill my workflow…

Notice how this thread is being superbly ignored by Trimble staff and “sages” despite having (so far) 165 comments eloquently and painstakingly documenting grave usability issues with LO.

I think the roadmap is being kept confidential because dev resources are working hard to port SketchUp to the Web, and users might be displeased that their problems are not being worked on because Trimble thinks it’s more important to start charging everyone’s VISA every month.

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I’ve suggested the same thing before, however given the few hints we’ve glimpsed of Trimble’s corporate culture I doubt any open source / open standard solutions are ever going to happen.

Could not agree with you more. Bring layout up to speed with other similar CAD packages and SU will dominate the residential design market for years to come.

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