Layout File Sharing Functionality

LayOut
1

I’m having an issue involving collaborative design using SketchUp and Layout.

Specifically, we have no problem sharing Sketchup models through the Cloud, and can easily edit files on our hard drive, then upload back to the shared folder, either replacing the previous version or creating a new one.

The problem is when we share a Layout file, its links will not be transferable. If my design partner has created the file and included many images or references to other models that he has but I do not, they might appear as “Missing” in the document setup window, and I have to find and update every one.

I know that I can not hope to link to files that are on his hard drive and not mine, and I also see that we could possibly save every file into the shared folder before including it in the Layout file, allowing the Layout file to access these attached files from any computer with the same Cloud access.

My question is: is there a built-in functionality that would help our Sketchup files to keep track of their own attached files? Maybe some sort of “auto-add-to-folder” like iTunes does?

Help appreciated.

2

Hi-

There’s no built-in functionality for this in LayOut 2015 - I invite other folks to chime in with their cloud-based workflows.

The basic problem here is that LayOut remembers the absolute path to any inserted document - this works great as long as the inserted documents always exist at the same path. The best way to do this on a cloud drive is to always copy files to the cloud drive before inserting into LayOut, and also make sure that everyone accessing those files has the cloud drive mounted at the same point on their local machine. (i.e. if one person has it mounted at /Users/person1/Desktop and the other person at /Users/person2/Desktop, LayOut will get confused).

Thanks,
Marc