@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;
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move / copy can be infuriatingly slow and inaccurate (as demonstrated by @josh4)
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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,
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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!
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updating documents with lots of scenes can take a huge amount of time
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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.
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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
. 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.
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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…
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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
- a step in the right direction.
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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, 
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…?