LayOut yellow triangle of death

So I’ve experienced this in Layout 2017 as well as 2x previous versions.

I copy an image or bit of SU model. I paste it into layout. I add dimensions, notes, whatever.

I come back some time later : Drawing missing from LayOut. Yellow /!\ triangle in the corner. Dimensions have moved to the edge of the page (As there’s nothing there any more for them to dimension!).

The drawings are meant to be all embedded so I cannot understand what happened. This seems to occur all the time

what gives?

Well, to start with, you are getting your SU model views into LayOut incorrectly.

This is where you are creating the problems for yourself. You need to use the proper workflow to avoid these problems.

First, in SketchUp,create scenes of the various views you’ll need of your model. Use Layers to control what is visible in each scene.

Save the SketchUp file and then use File>Send to LayOut to start a LayOut project. Select the desired template.

Select the desired scene for each viewport from the SketchUp Model inspector window. You can copy the first viewport to add multiple viewports on a page with Move/Copy. Or you can use Edit>Copy, Edit/Paste in the LO Edit menu to copy the viewport and paste on another page.

DO NOT edit the camera position or zoom in the viewport. Do nothing that makes the scene show as modified or you’ll break the link to the original scene.

And the yellow triangle indicates that the viewport needs rendering.

So, what you seem to be saying is:

Linking to things in LayOut is massively, fundamentally, totally broken.

I appreciate you detailling what does, and doesn’t work. But “you’re doing it wrong” seems nonsensical. Cut and paste is a pretty fundamental software feature. I’ve noticed it also seems to fail for pasted images meaning, if I read you right - I also cannot crop and cut a selection of an image for use in LayOut; I must laboriously create a new image, save it on disk, and place it on the page.

Creating a bazillion scenes is hard work. I’ve got (or : rather : I had) about 30 different small pictograms of window types. Who in the heck wants to laboriously create views for them when drag, select cmd+C, Cmd+V is a thing? I don’t need a linked SU model. If it’s so bust, it shouldn’t be enabled at all.

I.E: DO NOT use features provided within the product, or the product will break horribly. And worse: it won’t happen immediately, it’ll only - and randomly - occur when you re-open the document some time later.

Maybe. In this instance it seems to mean "sorry, I’ve totally forgotten about your embedded resource - even though it appears in the document properties.

@magnayn

When you go to Layout’s Document Setup > References, what do you see? A screenshot would be great.

… also, what rendering setting are you using for your SketchUp viewports (Raster, Vector or Hybrid)? Do you have the viewports set to Autorender?

CD

No. What I am saying is your workflow is broken.

You can resist using LayOut in a way that works but then you will continue to have problems.

Whatever made you believe that cut/copy and paste across programs (SketchUp and LayOut are separate programs from the point of view of your computer) preserves the origin of the cut?

If you cut/copy, then switch to another program, you’re using the operating system’s clipboard, which may be sophisticated enough to preserve (some) formatting, but none are sophisticated enough to preserve the origin in such a way as to allow a change to the original to update the copy.

Fine, but the issue at hand is why we continue to have problems. In that - there seems to be a fairly bad bug somewhere such that embedded links are dangerous to use.

I didn’t. And why would I, as that’s got nothing to do with the problem.

To be clear: In LayOut, you can paste images and drawings from other programs - including, but not limited to, parts of SU models. I’m not expecting (and it doesn’t need) to know the source of the object any more than when I paste text into Word it needs to remember the source. This is not a case of me expecting it to ‘magically’ change when the source changes.

These parts are listed as “embedded” links. At the time of pasting them, it’s all fine. But then - randomly it seems, embedded objects break when you re-open the document, and get replaced with empty spaces and warning triangles.

Imagine if you opened a word document, and the graph you had pasted into it when previously using it suddenly had disappeared? Does that feel to you like a reasonable thing?

@ChrisDizon it looks to me like it’s that the embedded items are just getting corrupted somehow. I can find the embedded resource in the references; clicking around the auto/manual re-rendering options and trying vector/raster/whatever doesn’t seem to help. It feels like it knows it needs re-rendering, but on trying it it fails. I tried the backup “~” file, but that has the same problem - though it could be that it’s (auto)saved over it as it is usually a while before I notice it’s happened. Right-clicking for “render models on page” causes any previously attached labels to point to the top-left of the page.

It could be that an (auto)save has crashed, causing corruption in the LAyout file - but that it is still readable (and LayOut doesn’t think that it is corrupt). Looking at the file sizes that seems to be the case.

@magnayn

Thanks for the info. I am digging a bit deeper on our end. Stay tuned.

CD

Any chance the LayOut team could get a copy of one of your LayOut files that shows this problem?

Thanks,
m

Also, any chance you’re working directly on a network drive? Either a local network, or a cloud storage system?

-m

I’d still love to get my hands on a file that’s showing this issue - especially if the missing files are still present inside the LayOut file.

-m

I am having this exact issue as well. Any insight?

How about sharing the LO file so we can see what you have going on? The OP’s problem was an incorrect work flow. Is that your problem, too?

Me too…

You have an incorrect work flow, too?

1 Like

so, just click the “Render” button

I have just experienced the same issue.
If I update the properties in the references - window it makes no difference.
I did not copy/ paste, the SU model was Inserted.
I have another document in the same folder that references the same SU file and all is well.

re-rendering, relinking, updating has no effect - auto update is on

my files are stored on iCloud drive but effectively local as it is replicated.

luckily the backup is OK but just thought I’d post

cheers
rob

Select one of those viewports with the yellow triangle. Does its scene show as modified in the SketchUp Model inspector window?

I can’t even select the model views m, I can right click and see render model but I don’t get the blue selection box

What if you try dragging a right to left selection box in the area of the viewport?