Layout Speed

Hi. I know this has been touched on before with loads of threads online outside of this community.

I was hoping after spending a loing time setting up scenes ready for Layout import, to spoend the day making plans ready for a presentation. Yet…even when working in vector rendering, the colour wheel pops up repeatedly when importing new viewports…

You all seem to be super helpful with 2 or 3 clicks that make all the problems disappear…is that possible in this instance or is layout just slow *(which is the impression im getting from other users?)

Thanks again,

Two observations:
Raster rendering is the fastest LayOut viewport rendering mode. Vector and Hybrid are much slower.
You don’t want to import the same model many times into your LayOut document. It bloats your file size and, again, makes the file work slower as the multiple links to the same file are kept up. You import it once, and then make copies of the viewport and set the copies to display your different scenes.

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Thanks for your thoughts, I’ll have a go using raster (its mainly line work…Ill use hybred for colour images of model?)

Where possible, Ill use copies and see how that goes.

Good tips!

Do not insert the same SketchUp file in the LO project more than once. And don’t copy and paste from SketchUp (or other applications) into LayOut.

After you have the inserted the SketchUp file into LayOut, copy one viewport to make others.

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A few other things I’ve found useful. Set up your scenes in SketchUp to show the camera positions you need in your LO document. Avoid doing anything that modifies the Camera settings in LO (results in a dark gray background in the Camera section of the SketchUp Model panel).

Keep your SketchUp models clean. Purge unused stuff from it.

Create layers in your LayOut template based on the type of content. Keep dimensions, labels and other text on layers different from and higher in the Layers list than the layers for your viewports.

These are the layers for one of my LO templates.
Screenshot - 3_13_2021 , 8_15_44 AM
Art text is for labels and such. Break lines, Dashed lines, and Hatches are for drawing entities created in LO.

The Model layers are for SketchUp viewports. Multiple layers for them because I frequently stack viewports. The Model layer is set to be active by default so when I send to LO from SketchUp and choose this template, the first viewport will be on this layer.

This template prints on Arch E paper and my client supplies the printed copies folded up so I added fold lines to help me figure out where to avoid putting important details. It gets turned off before export.

The last three layers are for title block and border elements.

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Thank you. Will keep that in mind.

Is it possible to snap different view points to align within Layout? For example, In this screen grab I have 3 copies of the view point all with different scenes in. I need to align each model within each viewpoint together.

I cant find anyway how to move and snap using the geometry within the viewpoint.

Does that make any sense? I can do it by eye but need it to be accurate so i can put one measurement on, corresponding with top view and front view for example?

Aside from the general tips that the others are giving, there is an issue with how long it takes for the page thumbnail to be generated. My suspicion is that the slowness is affected by the nature of the of SketchUp model. I had one customer file that took nearly an hour to open on my MacBook Pro. The same file took several hours to settle down in Windows.

Once a page thumbnail is made, you can get back to the page quickly, assuming you did a save after the thumbnails were made after first placing the viewports.

Can you do a test where you start a new LayOut file, insert the SketchUp file you are working with, and see if that is enough to get some amount of cursor spinning. If it is, can I try the files?

This is interesting Dave…

If the same SU file was inserted more than once it’s not going to show up more than once in Document Setup>References…?

Edit:
I just re-inserted an SU file and it doesn’t seem to show up twice in Document Setup>References, so how could you tell if you had (inadvertently) done this?

I tried too. It seems that if you insert exactly the same path file, LayOut copes. One interesting thing is that if you have changed the model after the first insert, the second insert viewport looks like the old state of the file. When you update the model reference for the second insert, both it and the first insert get updated to the later state.

Sorry I was on my way out the door and should have clarified. Don’t do anything that creates multiple references to the same file.

Yes it is. If you move the blue doodad (technical term) at the center of the viewport to some point in the viewport that has a corresponding point in the neighboring viewport, you can move the viewport to get those points to align. Then use the cursor keys to move the viewport over where you want it without changing the alignment. I did this kind of slowly so you can see what’s happening.
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If you set up your scenes correctly you may also be able to copy and paste one viewport and change the scene. Paste in LO is always Paste in place.
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For this to work you must have Object Snap on (and probably Grid Snap off)

Brilliant, thank you. Best of all is the new Doodad term which it will be forever known.

The ‘Doodad’ use to be called ‘Rotator’ and was red in the first edition.

In the official help guide it is called ‘center grip’ but I prefer to call it ‘Gizmo’, like @eric-s does in his video’s.
'Doodad’ sounds cool, though!

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Oh man! Doodad, Rotator, Centre Grip, and Gizmo.

All that just to talk about a Handle (technical term)!

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Don’t forget “Dohicky”!

Or “Thingy”

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Or “whatchamacallit”

Does anyone else hate the Hand icon as much as I do?

It covers things Im trying to snap to.

the MIA tool. missing in action… can never find the bugger!

if my Dad had used LO… “wigwam for a gooses bridle”

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