I’m with you. Layout is an embarrassment. Get on it, Trimble. I’m completely amazed it’s taken this long to get their attention if it’s not just more lip service.
I would suggest given the feedback so far that I’ve gotten from Trimble staff and my upcoming meeting, that they are on our side. I understand how you feel and I have felt somewhat similarly for some time, I think now that things are developing just please stay positive and be patient.
3 Likes
Hey ArayaCAD,
Best of luck with your meeting w/ Trimble next week!
I think you have a good idea of what most of us want, and will represent the group pretty well.
Go get us that LayOut Pro we all want, and deserve after waiting so long!
Bill
3 Likes
I have often wondered if this is the simple solution to (almost) everything.
The only reason I think it may be problematic is that you would have to set up ALL of your styles/lineweights, etc within Sketchup prior to export.
That may not actually be a problem, it simply may result in more scenes required in the SKP model, and we would need a Linewieght control within SketchUp’s tags menu).
I’m being a bore Tucker, but dimensioning in chief architect with the super whizzy line… I’d rather do it manually like in Layout.
1 Like
These are good suggestions - similar to my gripes with the functionality of LO…my experience is that a lot of the frustration is related to the interface (and the fact it’s not similar to SketchUp).
The fundamentals of LO are not broken - it just doenst offer the quality of drafting or document production tools & workflows that we are used to with other software.
There’s possibly been too much emphasis in LO’s creation on the presentation of smaller projects (eg carpentry), or “concept stage” designs, and on indivudual-user workflows… but most of our architectural/lanscape design/urban planning and engineering industries involve more complex models, workflows and outputs.
“Pro” software does need to create the sorts of outputs required by our local building and planning authorities, as well as interface with other “Pro” software (eg Autocad). Acheiving that with LO currently takes a lot of patience and plenty of workarounds orcompromises.
3 Likes
My thoughts and intentions for the upcoming trimble meeting:
Oddly enough - you’re the first person to show support directly my way ha! Thank you. Much appreciated.
I am trying to be neutral and will continue that approach in this upcoming meeting.
As for my knowledge of sketchup and layout - It’s been my obsession to find the best ways to use sketchup and layout for architectural design for a long time now, read all the books, know all the big players, I think I have an in depth understanding of these programs when it comes to architectural design. I have been around for about 6 years on the programs, have been reading the forums for a long time and seen a lot of the communities frustration. I would not say that I am surely the best person to be having this meeting. I got to a point awhile ago where I realized enough is enough, Sketchup and Layout are amazing programs (currently) but they could be a whole lot better and the reason I started this post is because I really don’t see the company taking these programs and their potential seriously and it’s bothered me for years. I finally called into the company directly over the phone last week and made it known and wanted to get to the bottom of this, hence the petition, thanks to you for fueling that fire.
All I can do in the meeting is listen and express my concerns and make an effort in expressing some of the communities concerns that I’ve read a lot about over the years. I guess to summarize, I want to know what it’s going to take for Trimble to realize the potential they have because I don’t think they get that. That’s mostly my goal, these programs could be a whole lot better, a whole lot sooner and I think it’s time we get the ball rolling. The fact that all this is happening and I’m the one that happened to create the petition really means nothing about me, I’m just the right person at the right time and fortunately and this is the key here (spoke with the right trimble staff member) and now we have some movement. Thanks to that staff member for hearing me out and doing something about it, (you know who you are). I think this kind of peition was bound to happen at some point, I am really not trying to take credit here. This is just how it’s played out. I’m excited to see how this develops.
3 Likes
I hope you’re not saying that
cannot produce
Have you seen this feature request?
1 Like
No, quite the opposite.
Individual users have more “power” when it comes to SKP setup and LO documentation.
People operating in a multi-disciplinary corporate environment have a lot more hoops to jump through (eg data interop standards, auditing, collaboration, file management, etc, that are implemtented at the Company Policy level).
What I am able to do for my own (personal) projects is way nicer, easier, and more fun than when I’m working on company projects using other people’s imported data (Vectorworks, Archicad…!!!) with 100s of tags and crazy referencing systems.
My point here is that SU & LO are lacking when it comes to things like interop, “XRef Manager” or version control, or working across multiple documents at once. There’s probably a solution that Trimble Connect could supply -at the risk of then introducing yet another application to do what should be inherent within SKP (LO is already a standalone app).
1 Like
Yes ArayaCAD, (Sorry, this is kinda long!)
You are the right person at the right time! I’m very glad to support what you have “started”!
As I said in my original response to your post, someone has to do this, and it is about time! I’ve railed against LayOut’s poor performance for years, and occasionally been shouted down, so I’m very glad you have made these overtures and received Trimble’s ear and response. It takes the right touch, and the right tone, and maybe timing doesn’t hurt either! Momentum has been building (perhaps only slowly) for years …
I would offer my feedback on one particular aspect/emphasis I’ve noted in some of your (and others) posts. In my opinion, lumping SketchUp and LayOut together in the same sentence (and analysis) is a mistake.
I would guess most Forum posters here would rate SketchUp very highly. Not so much for LayOut. So, do NOT lump them together (just because Trimble SELLS them as a “Pro Suite” together, because frankly that’s the only way anyone would “buy” this sluggish software), that doesn’t mean we should group them the same way!).
I suggest that you emphasize the need to focus on LayOut specifically (as I understand your original post was focused).
Let’s praise and congratulate Trimble on how really great SketchUp IS … because it really IS! LayOut is the focus here, I don’t have ANY major problems with SketchUp, I think really bringing LO up to the same level with SU is the goal, don’t you?
In order to get some idea of Trimble’s “relative commitment” to LO, I have asked numerous times on this Forum over the years about how big the LO team is, compared to the SU team. I’ve asked Adam (the Team Leader of LO) these questions, but of course they won’t tell me, it would be potentailly massively revealing! If I had to guess, based on LO’s “progress” over the years, I’d bet the ratio of the LO team to the SU team is 10 to 1! So, do we dare ask them, again, through your interface?! You will probably need to ease into this dialogue (hopefully the first of an on-going series), this is a kind of test, can you ask any of these “hard” questions, or is this just going to be soft-ball country?
Others on this post and elsewhere on the Forum have pointed out that Trimble is a huge company, and SketchUp is (evidently) a very, very small part of their overall concerns and profit center (so then, LayOut is just an even smaller, tiny sub-group of that!). This is probably the reality we face to get any real changes!
Getting Trimble to even “notice” that LayOut EXISTS may be your primary goal here …
In a sense, we are sending you into the mouth of the beast, so be strong!
We support you, Caring Makes the Difference!
3 Likes
Disclaimer: Even if I agree that Layout should be improved overall and that every action that goes towards improve it is welcome, I don’t feel represented by this petition. Good luck all.
But nothing will change! You only make a 3d view flat. All the other unnecessary information will be left out. I never use the option to change viewport views in LO (slowwwww) I just update a scene view in SU and update in LO afterwards. In the meantime SU exports a 2d snapshot of that particular view with all the tags, fills etc.
I too would like this new Rainbow Unicorn Layout product tomorrow at no extra cost.
Trimble are working on it. They are good people.
Can we delete the thread now?
1 Like
I’ll happily sign a petition to do that!
Kinda getting annoying, this post is practically pinned.
1 Like
While I do have a different opinion about the petition (you can see my posts above)… We must have to give a respect to others to do thing in their own way…
3 Likes
Fair enough 
Thanks
I have tried this particular workflow in the past.
There were a few use cases where I noticed DWG files imported to SketchUp and displayed in Layout were very fast to work with in Layout.
I’ve worked with a plugin developer to create a batch exporter that would export each scene into a 2D Sketchup drawing that I would then insert in Layout.
At that time the batch export wasn’t easy to accomplish and I quit.
The idea was to batch export and overwrite the files each time the model would be updated and reload them in Layout for dimensioning and labelling.
Viewports displayed in Layout would cease to be a full 3d model and become a simple 2D instead and fast. Overwriting them and reloading would result in the same effect as saving and reloading a model in Layout.
I have discussed this often in the past and I bet some Trimble employees have payed attention to the idea.
I think it could work.
1 Like
Throwing my two cents in the ring here - thanks to @ArayaCAD for providing a place for this conversation to happen. We are a medium-sized design/build firm based outside of Jackson Hole, WY. We have been using SU and LO exclusively for about 4 years to produce conceptual 3D models, 20-40 page architectural plan sets, and custom cabinetry shop drawings.
I echo the sentiments of lots of those above who say that Sketchup is a joy to work with, while Layout causes lots of frustration, heartburn, and loss of productivity. It is possible to produce high-level, professional construction documents with Layout, but it is by no means smooth or intuitive. It didn’t take me and my team long to come up with this list of gripes/issues/requests. @ArayaCAD maybe you can take these and all the other requests above to your meeting:
Disclaimer - there may be solutions to some of these problems that I am not aware of, so don’t roast me too much. But if those solutions exist, I would argue they aren’t easy to find without poring over user forums, while they should be native to the Sketchup and Layout environment.
General Issues:
- Fix issues with multiple monitors (SU and LO)
- Slow and awkward movement and manipulation of elements on page (LO)
- Loss of productivity due to near daily bug splats (SU and LO)
- Lack of robust annotation and architectural industry specific tools to produce professional drawings (LO)
Layout Requests:
-
More continuity between Sketchup and Layout with tools, commands, etc.
-
More native automation for setting up viewports, scales, line weights, etc. ConDoc tools is great for this, but shouldn’t it be baked into a drafting program?
-
Auto-text for drawing titles and scales. The scale should automatically change to whatever the viewport is scaled at.
-
Ability to annotate with text on “Presentation mode” We use this primarily as a “redline” mode
-
More robust text formatting options within layout text palette
-
Automatically place all dimensions on a “dimensions” layer, same for annotations, viewports, etc.
-
Expanded pattern fill library with common architectural symbols and fills
-
User saved dimension styles on the dimensions palette, similar to the ability to save custom colors in the colors palette
-
More streamlined pop-out version of scrapbooks palette. It is too small/awkwardly sized to be useable
-
User created plugins for Layout - I’m not smart enough to do this, but why not allow the community who is using this program every day help to improve and iterate on it?
-
Create a vicinity map within the program (similar to geolocate model) instead of having to import an image
-
Auto populating drawing index on cover page
-
Native ability to import a pdf to draw on top of (SU and LO)
-
Some sort of automation for the creation of architectural grids
-
Automation for the creation of elevation marks (set a point as 0’-0” and automatically fill in heights above and below 0’0” Possibly add this to the dimension tool palette?
-
Automatically annotate section cuts in floor plan views
-
Additional options for exporting to PDF
-
More seamless transition between colored, textured models to black and white textured out for 2D plans (SU and LO) Right now I am using the “Donnely Method” which works great but it is time consuming.
-
“Save Toolset” or “Save Working Environment” option that works outside of individually saved models (SU and LO)
-
Scene folders at top of screen (Mostly Sketchup)
*More toolbar options for Layout that don’t involve digging through a long palette list. Text formatting on the ribbon above? Yes please.
And echoing some requests from other users above:
-
User defined scrapbooks must go to the top of the list, before predefined scrapbooks.
-
Use Table to make a drawing list that updates itself, getting info from the Pages palette and Autotext fields on your pages.
-
A callout from your viewport to place in your drawing title field would be nice. And then The drawing list feature would know which value to put into the list: its the active callout / callouts.
-
Labels that retrieve info from model in a clever way (tags for height, gradient, area, number of objects, material names)
-
Connect data in tables and texts with data from the model with point and click.
10 Likes
You’ve got it totally figured out! Where can I get the juice you’re sipping?