Hi All
Iv started using sketchup and layout as a form of producing SOP’s for our shop floor final assembly instructions. At first all was well but, the last two times iv been having problems with the pictures (i use snippets of the model instead of the model its self as i have to explode it and then assemble it step by step). A couple of days after iv started the SOP or half way through 80% of the pics are just a grey box with a red cross through it. Can anyone can help??
The red cross means that the reference is lost. This is most likely because the ‘snippets’ that you used, are gone. (If you used Copy-Paste for instance, LayOut used the reference to temporary files, which could be erased by an automated Update of Windows)
To avoid these problems, one should always reference to ‘real’ files (File->Insert)
I suspect that you would profit more from using LayOut when you use the SketchUp Model itself instead of taking ‘snippets’
In order to prepare your model for that, you must use it more as a modeller, instead of just ‘drawing’ edges and faces…
Draw something you can build or buy and then select all and make it a Component (or Group) Build your model this way, piece by piece.
If something gets in the way or if you need to organise your model better, create some visibilty Layers.
You can assign your pieces to them in the entity Info Panel.
To remember certain views and which pieces are visible, you create scenes and choose how they look with an appropriate Style (Hidden Line, Camera perspective, Background color, etc.) Once done, Save the model.
With those scenes you will have a powerful way to control what you would like to show in LayOut.
In LayOut, you can insert the SketchUp model, it will be displayed through a viewport, and you can choose the scene. You will only have to insert the model once, viewports can be copied and pasted in a LayOut document, because the reference is allready verified. (it is the saved SketchUp file)
When you have copied the viewports, you can easily select the right scene in the SketchUp Model Panel, or by rightclickcing on the viewport.
Once the LayOut document is finished (and saved) LayOut checks if anything changed during the last time it was openened. If you made some changes in the SketchUp file (and saved those) it will prompt you to choose wether you want those changes or not.
Check out these:
3 Likes