I am having trouble displaying a scene in Layout which details components of a Sketchup model. The Sketchup model comprises a steel structure with about five separate components for a solar panel mounting frame. The overall model measures approximately 6 m on the horizontal and 5 m on the vertical legs. There are small splice plates. I have created scenes for each component. One of the components is diagonal to the drawing axis. I can view it on the component axis using with align view and a section cut. The issue I am having is finding these parts in a layout portal as they seem to be right out to one side of the portal and difficult to find.
Some of the layout portals scales are 1:50 and others are 1:2 to enable accurate detailing.
I also want to be able to select views such as top, front, and left so the component can be seen for engineering fabrication.
Could you please give me some advice on how to centre components in a portal and how it is best to set up my drawings for detailing components and various portals at various scales.
Looking forward to your assistance and thanks in advance.
From your description it sounds to me as if you would find it easier to make more scenes in the SketchUp model. It might make sense to lay out copies of the components so they are easy to work with in the viewports in LO. Rotate the angled one so it fits the way you want to show it on the page.
Example:
For this plan I made copies of some of the components and arranged them in the SketchUp model so I could use standard views to look at them and created scenes for them. The parts shown on the far right are all in a single scene so it’s quick and easy to set them up. The copy of the back slat at the top of the page was rotated to horizontal in SU again to make the set up easier in LO.
Thanks for the comment. If I want, say, a top, front, side, view of each of 5 components then that makes 15 scenes which is possibly OK for this model but quickly gets out of hand for say 20 or more components.
I guess what I want is a scene of a single component which fits neatly centered into a view port which i can then select the view: top front side as in third angle projection.
I would have thought this reasonably straight forward but I cannot find a way of doing it.
sometimes I have to mega expand the view port even to find the component
Check this out:
Hi Mike,
Thanks for that.
It appears that the extension essentially automates saving the individual component then creating a layout drawing for it.
Trouble is you do not appear to be able to insert a layout file into another layout to create a single document of all parts.
I think the work around is that I need to save each component as an individual Sketchup skp file then insert them individually into layout.
Trouble is you the loose a fair amount of interconnectivity of the main model with layout as each component needs to be saved and undated in layout.
Or am I missing something?
I guess you could do that but that’s a ton of work and as you mention, you lose some interconnectivity. I sure don’t wouldn’t do that. You didn’t seem to be interested in the way I do this stuff so I’ll leave you in @MikeWayzovski’s capable hands.
Hi Dave,
I did have a look but if you create extra copies then that would mess around with a bill of materials export I think. Also it seemed to make the model mor complex than just an exact model of the arrangement.
Thanks for your help however.
Just save all the LayOut files in a project folder, then add that folder in the LayOut preferences to the Scrapbooks.
Drag the viewports in the main document. All the viewports inherit the reference in the main document. If you edit the individual LayOut files and group all the viewports, you can drag them inside the main document at once.
If something changes, run the extension again.
It is not uncommon to have a lot of scenes in SketchUp, btw, as is to have a lot of pdf’s in a project. Automation helps, having a system helps even more.
I think this plugin can help.
It’s free. But unfortunately it is only in French I think. This plugin extracts each component from the model and for each component it creates a scene with the 4 views. all you have to do is import the scenes into Layout.
wensley was a support case before he was a forum poster, I was happy to see he got several suggestions. There was one idea I had, that may be naive, but wondered if it could be a way to go? Here are six chairs showing in different ways in LayOut. the SketchUp file has no scenes, but each chair is its own Tag. The rest is done with LayOut SketchUp Model panel settings.
Thats an impressive plugin… seems to maximise all the advantages of all dimensioning and notating within SU…pre layout and were so poorly executed in LO… better get out google translate…
ou apprendre le français 
Had to Google Translate that
PS, makes you wonder what other plugin gems are in other languages are invisible to us…