Camera positions in sketchup are independent of how you resize your modeling window, so they must be set as a view based on a coordinate for the viewer, a viewing direction, and a field of view.
That means there is a viewpoint coordinate set to the scene. For a plan view that only defines where ones plan view is positioned within ones modeling window.
In Layout, for viewports with plan views, one gets to set standard views (top) so as to define (and override, it they are not the same as the sketchup scene) the orientation. But the position will change it you update your sketchup scene after panning and zooming. Its easy to destroy ones Layout viewports if one updates the sketchup scene the wrong way. The right way is to update the scene without camera position change, but thats easy to forget. You could always have your scenes set to zoom extents so that at least you have a reference to get back to, but the extents of your model might change as well.
So if you make that update mistake, how do you get back to what you had ?
The solution is for Layout to have a ākeep original camera positionā or ālock camera positionā option. The lock viewport option one has now is only useful for viewports that you never want to update.
I think this ālock camera positionā option set to the viewport will solve other things as well. Now I untick āenable sketchup model editingā so as to not by accident orbiting my plan views. But that means I cannot change the few viewports that are in perspective. Having locked ācamera positionā, āorthoā, and āresizeā, should mean that I cannot enter my viewport at all through double clicking it.
Together with ālock camera positionā and the existing two options āorthoā and ākeep scale on resizeā one can make sure ones viewports never undergoes sudden changes.
After all, sometimes one does things in sketchup without thinking about the consequences to the layout viewports, and its nice to have ones brain cells focused on the modeling, and not constantly on the procedural steps of how to keep ones viewports in order.
I agree with this. Itās a long standing feature request.
What should also be possible is to change the scale of a viewport and have it stretch automatically to have the exactly same viewport size ratio and camera position it had before. So the drawing would be exactly the same, but larger or smaller, depending on the scale change.
Add to that the fact that if you change screen size when working with sketchup and saving scenes, your Layout viewports might also fail.
Having said that, @Odd_Haakon_Byberg , what I do is to control that Layout misbehaviour is two things:
Zoom to selection, which at least is more controlable. You can have a static object like the terrain or context that allows you to do that.
Never use the refresh wheel, nor the right click on a scene tab to update scenes. I use the advanced settings and update just the property I need in each scene. Itās much less prone to mistakes and if you deal with multiple scenes it also allows you to mimic particular properties from one scene to another. That particular property might be the camera.
For my needs Iāll make the change in the main model then open the secondary plan / elevation / section model and reload the model reference just once for each secondary model.
For me itās not especially onerous.
I think if I was doing a larger development Iād work in the same wayā¦??
I actually only work that way on larger projects where it pays off to divide work by collaborators.
I have a xref system I put in place and each people works on a part of the project while one coordinates the master model.
Each part of the project has itās own Layout files associated with it though. We tend to split Layout files, but not the models they are referenced to. Each of those models carry all scenes needed for each Layout file.
I do most of my work in the commercial sector, so models and LO files can get large. I also use a Master Model, which I find makes things easier to handle. It is a simple matter to open the sections model, for example and erase the 3D model and recopy from Master Model as a paste-in-place.
@ksarch_CDG_TSA_2 You should try usign Components as external references. Right-click in a component and āsave asā to save a Component as an external file or āreloadā to update an external component that has been edited into your master model. Itās much faster than copy pasteā¦
I guess one needs to find a strategy of having as small as possible imports and model updates into Layout. The program is buttery smooth with smaller projects, but for my more complex projects comes the lagging. Iāve tried to watch my activity monitor (Mac) to see the RAM impact while updating model references, and it seems it will not use more than 3 gb Ram even if more is available. From looking at all the stuff going on in activity monitor I probably should get more ramā¦
But it does max out the cpu, and maybe thats what matters while updating the model reference.
