Layout Auto Text labels from dynamic components

LayOut
1

Hi,

I am the default “BIM” manager in my architectural office but have a love hate relationship with Revit, ie. I love what it can do, I hate the way it does it. I understand Revit and am quite good at it, but hate the time consuming problem solving I have to go through for other people.

I prefer using Sketchup for my design thinking anyway so I have been looking at the Sketchup Layout combo to find more interesting ways to produce working drawings but have struck a potential problem in the drawing output, namely easily controlling the auto label text box size to get multiple lines of text.

For example: If I have a long string of text associated to a component and tag it in layout, it comes in as a single line of text, which, on long texts strings is not good for the layout of details on a page. I would prefer it to be two lines of text which i can easily resize and align. I can resize the text box manually… sort of… but it is difficult and annoying to do as it encompasses the whole leader in the resize.

What am I missing here, Am i doing something wrong? or is this something I have to wait for?

The text on a drawing is the thing that takes the longest and is the most tedious, I would love to use the auto text features of Sketchup/Layout to resolve this (like Revit) but not being able to easily control the label text to get the right look to a drawing might be a deal breaker.

Thanks for any help.

-Brendan

2 Likes
2

Hi Brendan-

The way to do this is to resize just the text box of the label (not including the leader line). To do this, double-click on the leader line of a label to enter a special, label-specific manipulator. This should give you resize grips directly on the text box - (note that it’s only possible to resize the edges of the text box that aren’t connected to the leader line). This will also allow you to adjust individual points of the leader line, as well as changing how the leader line connects to the text box. Give it a try! We have a knowledge center article in the works but it’s not public yet.

Thanks,
Marc

2 Likes
3

! Thank you very much Marc, So simple and works a treat.

Keep up the good work

-Brendan

4

On the same note that brendan has brought up, is there any way to make these text boxes in the labels resize themselves? As brendan mentioned, this is a big setback for documentation in SU/LO… It would be great if there were a way that every time I changed the content of the text (within the text box of the label), the text box would resize to fit that text, even if I had to correct it some of the time. This functionality works with the regular Text boxes, sans leader, but not for the Labels.

If there is a solution, thank you in advance for your advice. If not, thank you in advance SU for considering.