Layout API "Hello World"?

[DanRathbun]

@hank

Are there plans for for Layout API to go “live” or whatever where you could write scripts that worked without SketchUp?

We “suspect” so. But it hasn’t happened yet. Trimble’s SketchUp division does not publish roadmaps or future plans.

@hank

When my firm uses Layout to annotate drawings, there are probably 50 typical annotations we use I would like to create some sort of UI in Layout that could cycle through them.

But because the LayOut APIs are currently file APIs that read and write .layout files only, you cannot author extensions that run within LayOut or modify it’s interface.

@hank

I suppose I could l use the Label Tool’s ability to draw element data like Face Area into Layout. Seems super hacky so any thoughts?

There is another topic thread around here about this very thing. Currently (despite requests) the LayOut Label tool is hard-coded to only access certain Attribute Dictionaries.

So you can use the SketchUp API to add attributes to the "dynamic_attributes" dictionary, and they’ll be available in LayOut to it’s Label tool. The other special dictionaries ("SU_DefinitionSet" and "SU_InstanceSet") are hard-coded to only access certain attributes, so any custom attributes will be ignored.

LayOut also has AutoText that can be added to your firm’s template.

Another option may be to bring in notes via tables linked to external spreadsheet files.

However, any UI that chooses these options would need to be done in a SketchUp extension, usually just prior to the LayOut document creation.