I didn’t know that. Do you have any ideas that would be better? (I’m not asking that sarcastically either).
I don’t want to suggest that your topic is meaningless. Not at all.
I just assume the answer from SU team will be meaningless. You might get a bugs fixed. Some words like “we are working on it” or “later on we will look for it”.
Or take a real example: After about 32 weeks of begging, you can expect one (1) of your requests to be fulfilled somehow like occurred in “EW Broken?” topic. In that topic at least they said something about low priority.
Perhaps Layout have a higher one.
But you will not get a roadmap. I’m sure.
Good luck!
Edit:
To avoid misunderstandings:
I love 
Sketchup and Ruby and I don’t use Layout.
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Haha… Thanks for clarifying! Just gotta try something though so… Yea… I hope the community starts being heard. What you’re talking about happens a lot and unfrotruantely a lot of companies don’t actually grasp what real customer service means. In my opinion if you improve customer service, you improve your revenue so I’m not sure why so many businesses don’t seem to catch onto stuff like this. I think a lot of businesses probably do and a lot don’t… Idk, I just want to see things improve a lot more… I think there is a lot of potential with layout and skethcup. My assumption is if things continue this way, I think another company is going to sweep these guys off there feet and a lot of people will be moving forward without them.
I’m not sure if being a publicity traded company is of influence, here. The developers of Trimble Connect constantly speak about it:
https://community.trimble.com/search?executeSearch=true&SearchTerm=roadmap&l=1
Speaking about it doesn’t mean you are directly accountable for getting the feature in the software, though.
‘It’s on our roadmap’ might just as well be another phrase for ‘We’ll look into it’
It might be worth to set up a special LayOut project in SketchUp Labs
I don’t have time to read everything here right now. I also don’t know the magnitude of your projects. I’m pushing 28 24x36 sheets out of one LO file with no real problems. You may need to take a hard look at your process and resource management. I’ll look at the thread over the weekend and see if there are any clues to why you are struggling so much.
I tried everything but never got LO snappy and fun to work with.
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…and one other thing. Trimble just won’t see the enormous potential LO could have if they just make it a usable piece of software.
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I’m a self proclaimed Layout Paladin.
Layout is great!
It allows us to dimension and label a SketchUp model, create almost standard 2D output from it and stays in sync with SketchUp models.
It mostly displays a SketchUp model in a wysywig fashion too. It is, therefore, capable of producing some of the best looking architectural drawings I’ve seen.
It’s just slow and unintuitive but that compensates Sketchup which is intuitive and fast.
Keep your models simple and nimble, if you can, and Layout will get faster. If your models are simple enough, it will be fast or very fast.
Draw most things you can in SketchUp and you’ll loose less time in Layout.
The glass is half full.
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I would like to chime in in support of the OP request. LO has gotten inordinately buggy (crashes daily and freezes/lags near constantly); and it exports GIGANTIC files in the 2020 version. (The jump to 2020 was so bad I have held off jumping to 2021.) Please don’t tell me to keep my models simple and nimble, please don’t tell me to not insert images. This is professional program and I use it to communicate to clients and builders and city officials. I need to be able to use complex files and large photos and I need to be able to reduce file size to be be emailed without losing quality to the point of it becoming pixelated and unreadable. Exporting used to work; it doesn’t anymore. Working within LO used to be less buggy, with fewer crashes and lags. This needs attention.
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Count me in ArayaCAD… My entire practice is SU and Layout oriented. I’ve had to wait 6+ minutes for LO to render a single viewport in vector or hybrid… and the lag while working on a viewport is crazy. I can work on a vector drawing in illustrator with many times the geometry/vectors and it zooms and works without a bit of stress. Come on Trimble, your professional users are begging, begging for improvement… Please!
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Then why is Adobe publishing a public roadmap for Photoshop, Illustrator and Fresco for iPad?
To me this is just a lame excuse…
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This was a fun read!
Hey Simon if I was flying a Spitfire and had a 109 on my tail I would bail out and hopefully fall into a Mustang…bye, bye 109. But that is another post entirely. 
Only…there is no Mustang in this analogy so what to do?
I think I remember someone saying that our job as users is to complain loudly and the software owner, Trimble, should get all warm and fuzzy because we care so much about their product that we are willing to waste time on the forum having a tantrum.
More seriously, having read thru everyone’s comments, I thought I would add that there are giants today NOT following this most normal of boardroom tactics; namely not establishing a roadmap so that failed expectations don’t mean lost customers.
See Space X for one example. Mars is and has always been the very public goal. They have all sorts of fans and when they crash a multi-million dollar rocket no one bats an eye because that is only one step in getting to the goal. The goal keeps the money and interest flowing. The critics are numerous and the pundits are never quiet. But Mars is still the goal.
Look to Mojang if you need a software company as an example. Builder of the single biggest selling video game of all time, Minecraft. They not only have a roadmap for the future, but they put their new versions into beta’s 9-12 months before release and let their users test and play them and give feedback before final release. When it came time to hold to their goal this summer to release their next giant update, 1.17, it was so large and expansive that it would have crushed their workers so, departing for the normal slave mentality, they split it in half and publicly changed the release date and the entire community has adjusted with them. Why? Because the game and it’s vision and goals were bigger than the deadline. The user and the maker are basically of one mind.
The issue here is that the maker, Trimble, “appears” to not be in touch with the respect the community has for the product. That respect is visibly seen in loyalty. Not because of them, but because of the software itself. As another user said, “there are gaps and soon another maker will see the gap and step in to fill it”. This is not a threat, this is a reality. The biggest thing that Trimble could do here is to show some legit respect for this loyalty by communicating their vision and goals for the software and get us on the “space ship to Mars”.
In a month Apple will again have another of their big events to tell everyone about their new lines and what is coming. They get the sell do they not? Kevin Fiege of Marvel fame, releases films so they will coincide with ComicCon. Why? Because he gets the sell does he not?
You, Trimble, are sitting on a product that could own the industry. Forget about its failings in Layout. I would never use AutoCAD again, I would never look with longing at Blender. I would never ponder that viability of Rhino or the others. Why? Because nothing I have tried is as intuitive as Sketchup. So I’m here and suffer with oddities of Layout because Sketchup has me locked in. If I got quarterly sizzle reels of @colin standing on stage showing off new features to the applause of the crowd or if I saw a Layout Trailer on Youtube that had all the lens flares in the world overlaying @TheOnlyAaron as he demonstrated the future releases I can tell you now, I would continue on with the grind with great expectations.
Ok…I’m taking my soap box back home now.
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I mean the combination of SU and LO.
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A beast of a thread from 2018. Still. Just sayin.
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It’s not that I am struggling so much, I understand the programs very well and my workflow in layout is very automated. It’s the fact that layout is still slow to move objects around, viewport sizing, no components in layout, basic tools. Autocad is worlds better than layout for making construction documents. It’s hard to not use layout when one has a workflow as automated as mine is in sketchup and layout but there are a lot of problems in layout and they have been there for a very long time, that’s nothing new. The rate of development on the programs is also incredibly slow and there is no public roadmap so users are always in the dark. Things get done at a snails pace. Comparatively to other products in the industry - these are obvious problems, not that I don’t understand how to utilize the most out of layout, I certainly think I do know how to use the program quite well and it’s capabilities,but that’s just my opinion I guess and my experience.
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Thanks for the awesome insight with your comments!
It’s over 10 years since I used AutoCAD but I think I can say that comparing my experience of Layout in the last 10 years or so, I think Layout is better for me making condocs.
But that’s just a matter of opinion…
If you use AutoCAD then:
If you use Sketchup, then Layout is worlds better than AutoCAD for making construction documents.
Try producing building construction documentation from a Sketchup model using AutoCAD.
Yet, nimble and fast models are what you need if you want use Layout.
If you can’t produce them or if you have hit a bottleneck in what Layout can handle, then my advice is switch software asap. I wouldn’t stand waiting for Layout to get faster that soon.
The thing is: if you want to keep modelling in Sketchup, try to pay attention to the trade off.
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Fair enough JQL and I do agree that when you’re using sketchup than layout makes the most sense. The tradeoff is what I was referring to as well. I think labelling is terribly slow in layout compared to autocad but of course duplicate work would have to be produced if using autocad with sketchup…
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There are options to use AutoCAD and Streamline your work, with minor duplication, but it’s not as seamless as with Sketchup. Take a look at Skalp. It exports Sketchup Scenes as 2D DWG files in a very efficient way.
You could use Sketchup for modelling and Skalp for exporting to Autocad for Drafting and Documentation.
However, I prefer using Sketchup for Modelling and Drafting and then Layout for Documentation.
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