Note that each discipline in construction has its own requirements, which is a big difference from, for example, Architectural to Mechanical.
Well, obviously, modern buildings not standing the test of time isn’t really anything to do with CAD… they are designed and engineered for a lifespan of 30-50 years, which is mostly driven by cost.
Wren took 35 years to build that Cathedral… you’d be talking $billions these days! 
He looks like a Rhino8 kinda guy to me.
The point I was trying to make was he created some fantastic structures without CAD. Do you think he was sat at his drawing board complaining at the quality of quills and charcoal, or did he just get on with it. 
Maybe he relied on CAD after all… Charcoal Aided Design 
SketchUp for Ipad and SketchUp Go (for web) never included LayOut…
I don’t see Layout replacing or taking any real hold in the CAD market.
It’s not built for acurate and repetitive work. Not that it can’t be done, but it’s awkward and very limited.
Most of it’s processes stem more from illustration software, for 2D vector + raster presentations, and are then being slowly adapted to have more accuracy and predictability.
It has no LISP nor Ruby nor a robust API for programming, customizing and expanding on it’s core functionality.
There are way more intuitive and complete illustration software apps.
It’s very basic, though it shines for complementing Sketchup and it’s good enough for adding dimensions, leaders, titleblocks, texts and display models into standard drawings.
What it, at the moment, needs is a couple of things:
- Export DWG files should be able to export viewport Sketchup Tags to CAD layers.
- Have all the standard architectural Labels like section lines, area and room tags, height tags, gradient tags, coordinates tags, details callouts, being easy to create, customizable, easily manageable and parametric, both in plan view as well as elevations view.
Solving that, would be key, after that it can be fine tuned to the limit and kept updated.
ArchyVR, thanks for your insight here. Producing 2 drawings in LO to the level of detail I can/could quickly do in Vectorworks is my second biggest issue with it. The first far and away biggest is exporting to dwg from LO. I utterly dread being asked for dwgs!
I’m going to read that thread you just linked to and see if that helps, but if anyone has a simple idiots’ guide to exporting dwgs that don’t break every circle or polygon down in to thousands of tiny lines I would be forever grateful!
Opening an exported dwg in Vectorworks to find it now has half a million line objects and moves at the speed of a glacier is soul destroying.
I don’t see Layout replacing or taking any real hold in the CAD market.
Well, by LO’s very existence and the fact that I and others have completely changed over from from CAD to SU it already has done so to a certain extent that it has, so I’m struggling a little bit to see your point.
Like I said earlier, we each have our own needs, and one approach/ software isn’t going to suit everybody. I also said that we’re all a little myopic and think “my” needs are everyone else’s needs.
I’m sure you’ll agree there is more room for LO to eat some more of the cake that the overblown-priced autodesk software is currently munching on.
The architects I’m talking about who are ripe to change over are using CAD in the most basic fashion: Lines, curves, dimensions, notes, layer control, line thicknesses, hatches, send to PDF. LO already handles all of those things. Not using lisp commands, but that’s a requirement that you and some others have but not everyone else does.
I would say you’re assuming the point where I’m coming from, while I am trying to objectivelly reply to your point.
I have made the move from AutoCAD to exclusively Sketchup and Layout, more than a decade ago. I’m in the process of adding IFC to that workflow. I hope that this is out of the way now.
To your point:
Your point is that Layout could be a very simple DWG editor that could become a standalone product sold by Trimble.
I think it’s really far from that, even at a basic level. I tried explaining by key points.
One example:
Try to edit multiple lines at the same time, like what you would do with a Trim command and you’ll see what I mean.
You could say that this is easily fixable if Trimble would develop this and that. I could agree.
But then we would have to cycle every basic action in CAD and see how it would be adapted into the Layout alternative workflow and tools.
This, alone, would be a huge task.
There are already a lot of apps trying to eat some cake there.
Trimble Drawing is the Trimble bet for that.
If Layout takes the same route it would only be marginal benefitial for people like you and me and it would only grab small pieces of the cake.
The big investment it would take, would deviate resources that would be better used on Sketchup users like you and me. Trimble should invest and is investing in attracting more users like you and me.
CAD means very little for me. If I have nice DWG exports from SU and LO, I can forget CAD and how stupid it is.
Those that are clinging to CAD, want to avoid the transition to BIM or other better workflows, so that they keep using the workflow they are used to. Except for the cost they do not want to move to another CAD app.
If those users want another CAD app, they already have a lot of alternatives.
Sketchup should invest assuming two points:
- CAD market is shrinking and becoming obsolete;, there are already nice alternatives, Trimble has an alternative
- Sketchup has its unique workflow. It should move on to adapt Layout tof be on par with BIM on the documentation side.
That’s my myope take on the subject and yes, I’m focusing on my interests as an user. A Sketchup and Layout user.
Honestly, Trimble should look at this thread like this: take a Sketchup model out of the equation and would users use Layout for drafting?
You say they are. You say I am myope.
That’s my myope take on the subject and yes, I’m focusing on my interests as an user. A Sketchup and Layout user.
Thanks for your response. It clarifies a few things. I agree you have to come from your own point of view and that it’s as valid as mine or anyone else’s. When I said “myopic” I wasn’t targetting you- I said we’re all like that- me included.
The thing is- New people are still getting into CAD. I’m interested in all the use cases where LO could be as useful or more useful, and what direction the development should take. Debate is good and I welcome all views here being challenged. Keep it coming. 
I edited that reply above on the two points I’m trying to make. I hope it is more clear now.
It wasn’t clear to me who you were targetting, but it was clear that you were assuming what kind of user I was.
I agree that all use cases for Sketchup and Layout are interesting for the whole business model but just think on this:
- If CAD market is shrinking and there are hugely better workflows that are becoming more adopted;
- If Sketchup has it’s own unique workflow and potential that can offer users way more than CAD
- If BIM is the future but the way BIM software imposes it’s workflow on people just feels awkward and expensive
- And if Sketchup is taking clear and decisive steps into full BIM compliance while sticking with it’s workflow, intuitiveness and simplicity, while not deviating from being more widely adopted in the 3D world than exclusively architecture
- Even if architecture is it’s main use,
Then why would it invest in a side product to make it more adapted to a dumbed down product of a decadent market, instead of investing in it’s own potential seriously?
If you take a look at you and me and most architectural users and plugin developers around here, you’ll see a path:
- There are more users each year that are ditching CAD for Sketchup and Layout
- There are more users moving away from 2D to 3D.
- There are more users wanting BIM and PDF instead of DWG
- There is more investment from plugin developers in BIM and Sketchup insuficiencies on that regard
- There are thus, less users on 2D DWG, that market is taken and alternatives exist.
Sketchup’s place in the Architectural market is 3D architecture for everyone. It dominates that!
I think it should consolidate and grow it’s take on that BIM market. Layout is truly far from the documentation capabilities of BIM software. It should start running to keep the pace. It should keep up with some sort of intuitive BIM and shouldn’t loose time looking back on CAD.
PS: Notice how I said 3D architecture instead of 3D modeling. Blender is taking the modeling part, not Sketchup. Sketchup only has one route: consolidating and expanding the 3D, not 2D, and architecture, not everything.
Coming from an AutoCAD and 3DStudio Max background, I love the transition I have made to LO for 2D Details and SU with Enscape for 3D models that make my Plans, Elevations… plus renderings, animations and VR all from one model. No more having 10 to 20 separate files for 2d floor plans, sections… to 3D models for renderings that are then put into a Photoshop file for cleanup, and then a separate VR model file for client interaction. I believe in One model to rule them all as the most efficient way to go, so that when you change the design, everything is updated easily limiting workflow repetition.
With that said, LO is how I detail and annotate my drawings. To me, LO just needs some CAD refinements including:
- Add a Trim tool versus only having a Split tool. (I should be able to use one line to trim one or more other lines without breaking the line I am trimming with into segments at the intersection. Trim should also get rid of the segment I am trimming off, rather than me having to erase them myself.
- Blocks and Components for LO entities. For Instance, Elevation Datum lines could be a component throughout all pages that need it such as elevations and building sections. So if I need to update one Datum Elevation line and text, all the other instances of that update. (I currently achieve that via a Datum Elevation Scene in SU, but I’m limited with linetype and clarity of text)
- Speed up Autotext. I noticed If I use too many Autotext entities on a project, it dramatically slows down LO when doing a ctrl-c copy of an entity. This was for a game I am making where I wanted to be able to replace the text in many locations all at once for different versions of the game. This is also handy if you want the exact same note to appear within different locations on the drawing. If you need to change the note, they all change throughout. On that front, it would be nice to be able to edit the note like a component within once of the instances of the note, rather than having to go the the Autotext Dialog box. Also, some kind of visual indicator that a note contains autotext and is instanced in other locations would be nice.
- Faster Vector rendering of SU viewports and output. I’ve personally giving up on Vector outputs for now, but would immediately go back if it were fast.
- Cleaned up DWG exports with no hidden lines by default (there is a way to avoid that with the right style, see previous my previous posts on this thread) and apply curves to circles and arcs instead of segments, and do not break every single line intersection into individual segments! This makes for bloated and very sloppy PDF and DWG exports.
- Allow snapping to items behind other entities such as text boxes. This is a bit frustrating that I have to either move text boxes or put them on a layer and turn them off to snap to items behind them.
Those are some key items that come to mind off the bat for me. As others have already listed out, there are many features that could be added to make LO better for a variety of scenarios and use cases. To me, investing in making LO so good that it could be a stand alone drafting tool, would just make it that much better when using it with SU view-ports, improving the experience everyone has regardless of their industry and workflow preferences.
No tell us… im keen to know the ending hahah
Yes we see customers still buying 2d cad. Its a market to target thats for surr regardless of the size of the business.
I’m actually fascinated by the possibility of Layout being a stand-alone tool that could accept Blender files as input. Blender doesn’t have a good 2D documentation tool, and the idea of it being able to read the linework from one of those files would be very attractive to me.
I don’t think anyone is talking about adding this functionality to Layout, but it’s a very interesting idea (in my opinion).
I think there are two sides to this, but there’s a significant crossover. Primarily, certainly for those of us trying to leverage the BIM aspect of SU. LO is the only documenting tool with access to the SU model data. On the flip side LO could become a 2D documenting tool for stuff outside the scope of 3D modelling. But the crossover is where much needs to be done to improve the less than intuitive quality of LO’s 2D tools, many of which have already been stated.
I haven’t given much thought to this – I just use the tools and get on with it.
I don’t get what’s so unintuitive about the Layout drawing tools – manipulation of elements maybe can be improved, but the actual drawing tools…?
@PaulMcAlenan When you’ve used something for long enough it becomes second nature, but anyone migrating to LO from another system could struggle. I think most other systems including SU work on the basis of Command > Action. In LO editing seems to be just Action e.g. depending on what you select and which node LO will edit accordingly, but the action of those nodes can be unpredictable if you aren’t familiar with LO. Yes there are cursor changes in some situations, but they can be very dependent on zoom and node proximity. The origin point of a move can feel almost random depending on whether you adjust the centre reference handle. My current frustration is drawing and filleting lines at an angle e.g. there isn’t a polar coordinate option in the measurement box ** to draw the line or a fillet tool. The process of draw, rotate, scale, trim & erase surplus in a busy drawing isn’t what I would consider intuitive or efficient.
**Happy to be corrected if I’m wrong! Ok found it… ^45,3", but I stand by the lack of a fillet tool issue
If I remember correctly – in AutoCAD LT – if I wanted to extend a line I’d invoke the Extend command click the line to extend to and then click the line that will be extended.
In Layout if I want to extend a line – with the line tool I click at the end of the line to be extended and draw an extension of that line to where it needs to extend to.
Yes, it does create an extra node.
It’s been a long time but I fairly sure I wasn’t frustrated when I made the transition from CAD to Layout.
I don’t want Layout to end up like CAD.
That would be a great thing. It crossed my mind before, to use Blender as modelling tool, especially with BlenderBIM and Layout as Paperspace, but the interoperability would have to be via Sketchup, and Layout is not that user friendly. Layout’s worth is really Sketchup.
Maybe it could change.
Totally agree on this.
It’s better to not draw at all in Layout and for Trimble to invest on the automatism from SU to LO and on the way of retrieving data from Sketchup to Layout.
Even better if it would be from any 3D model and Layout. Making it the Paperspace for all 3D. As Justin suggested.
Look at it like this:
You’re using Sketchup because you love how intuitive it is. It wasn’t, initially if you came from CAD. That’s true, but then it grows on you and now, at least for me, it’s the most intuitive.
Why would Layout have a totally different workflow from Sketchup?
Why would it be so different in inferences, tools, line drawing, dimensioning, everything.