LAYOUT PETITION: Status: CLOSED - Trimble Response Posted May 27th

Here in the UK, estate agents (aka US realtors) say the three most important things about a property for sale are (and in this order): location, location, and location.

I would say that the one thing all users of Layout can agree upon is that the three most important improvements that could be made to it are (also in tis order): speed, speed, and speed.

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I would say that advocating for more development output per year addresses all of that @endlessfix .

The idea in my mind here is to get Trimble to do more to the products that we love because there is so much more potential in these programs that hasn’t been developed yet and is taking forever to develop. Things are happening way too slowly as I pointed out a few posts back showing the update history release notes per year between 2016 and 2021. Your comment about 10 or so people… Even though it’s 10 people as you say, they are listening now aren’t they? The point is they (trimble) are open and hearing us and something is most likely going to happen as a result of this, so 10 people or 1000 is irrelevant. What is going to happen - of course I don’t know, but it’s clearly worth the effort so far as you see the results of what’s happening.

The other users you talk about are known and have been heard loud and clear throughout the community - through their own individual previous posts and the conversations that have happened in those individual posts. Part of what I’m suggesting in the peition here, is questioning not if trimble has heard them, but are they listening. Everyone is being heard, (key word heard). I’m really not sure about some of what you’re suggesting here, I can only assume.

This post is a discussion suggesting that Trimble isn’t really listening or certainly realizing or taking serious enough the programs we all love and use. Some of that might be an assumption, but surely of course if we had a roadmap, a lot of those assumptions wouldn’t need to be made, that and the slow development each year.

@simoncbevans , speed speed speed, can only come from - DEVELOPMENT, DEVELOPMENT, DEVELOPMENT. Even though I know you know that, just pointing out the obvious I guess…

Asking for more development and a roadmap benefits everyone. There is no downside to this petition if that’s the intent of it, the core of it.

You shouldn’t see this as exclusive. Having 2d viewports based on flat models does not mean you have to ditch 3d viewports. You can have both. Actually my implementation idea for flat data was only on Sketvhup export formats. We just needed a batch export for 2d Sketchup vectors from scenes.nthen these would be external skp files that would be imported into Layout individually. They are 3d sketchup models but they are flat. They use the same viewports as today. If you want to reload that model for a full 3d you could.

I do this already, sometimes and ithe flat skp models work very fast.

What I lack is a fast way to generate them, hence the batch scene exporter in Sketchup. This could overwrite flat files already inserted in layout and you simply had to reload all references.

Not a single change to Layout, only sketchup, and yet a major speed increase in your work with it.

A plugin developer could do it. If any of you is listening I’m available to explain the process better.

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Yea … the “So Much More Money” part should get Trimble’s attention!
If they are willing to do the work …

@ajharlan awesome feedback! thank you for taking the time to share all that!!

@kaidenh

I would think a 2D viewport could still retain tag structure, and from that be lineweight controlled in Layout ? Maybe a “flat” checkbox in the model pane in Layout? Maybe a “Output as 2D” checkbox in the Sketchup scene manager.

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Actually, I don’t quite agree. Development is a much wider term than just addressing the speed issue. This thread surely proves that. Some people might want much more control of things like dimensioning. That would be development. But the one thing that (it seems to me) unites us all is the clunkiness aka slowness.

And speed actually hides quite a lot behind it. All sorts of things have the potential to improve if this one thing can be successfully addressed. I suspect this follows the KISS principle. Get the architecture right to enable much faster processing and lots else follows.

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Amen! Exactly…this is exactly what I mean.

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I’m adding my voice to the petition. Layout is definitely lagging behind Sketchup. It is a shame because it has so much potential.

As mentioned in the OP, here are a couple issues/comments raised in the past: (the second one is still not resolved)

I really hope we will see some improvement.

I guess this post fits well into this topic too… :innocent:

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Have a look at FredoPortrait ($ paid I know)…Fredo may enhance if your needs are not currently met.
FredoPortrait

Thanks for the heads up I’m already on it and almost finished writing an email to @Fredo.

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Could we please FINALLY get PDF support where on windows computers - we can import PDF vector information into Layout without having to change the PDF file format. I need my pdf information to come in with colour, not as dxf vector line work as black and white.

This kind of request in my mind is one of the first things that should have been fixed when creating the layout program. PDF’s are the most popular file sharing type among professionals and have been for decades. I think this is more than a reasonable request and yet here we are today with no PDF importing support for windows using Layout… I think this has been a feature request for many many years now.

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??? I don’t suggest this option should replace the possibility of editing viewport in 3d.

Great testimony, it was awesome to read Dougs testimony on that thread. Here’s a good comment I agree with @trampy about

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Hey dezmo,
Thanks for linking this in to the overall conversation …

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I am also 100% on board to make our voices heard to fix layout. I’ve explained my grievances on this forum for years and am losing the energy to repeat again.
A few seemingly simple things could be a good start:

  1. General performance that keeps pace with SU. (loading speed of pages, loading speed of viewports, editing speed of text blocks for crying out loud)
  2. Ability to extract information from SU that can be presented in LO without a clunky middle step (for example, on architectural drawings: the ability to create a door tag in LO (without the weird label arrow workaround) that extracts info from a SU door component that can dynamical be linked and updated in a door schedule without the “re-export” of an XL file every time you make a change to the SU component) In other words, simple BIM type features.
  3. COMPONENTS IN LO!!
  4. Ability for third party plugins in LO! I thought this was near done 3 releases ago. What happened?
    I agree that a proper LO with some upgrades could dominate the AEC industry. Let’s see it SU/LO team!

On another note:
I believe I’ve asked this before on this forum: Aren’t there some smart programmers out there that we could rally together and just create a third party application that takes the place of LO and talks to SU? I would kick in for such a venture. If Trimble ain’t gonna do it, maybe someone else should.

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That was one of my bigger points, too. It’s just…well, insane, honestly. The program EXPORTS to PDF, but won’t import it? I sometimes add a lot of spec sheets for hardware and such, and converting all of those to jpg is such a pain.

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