Since over 10 years people have been asking on this and other forums for different line weights in SketchUp, similar to AutoCAD. Currently you can only adjust profile line weights only.
Then it was in SketchUp 2019 I think, that Dash types by Layer/Tag were introduced, which was awesome. To further develop on the Dash type, I am suggesting to extend the list.
This was a suggestion for SketchUp, not Layout but I don’t seem to notice any changes to line weights in LayOut 2024 Mike. They’re the same they’ve been, unless I’m wrong? Can you tell more?
If you look at the SketchUp model in LayOut you have the ability to modify the lines for the tags within your SketchUp model. You can set this to start in SketchUp, or do it in LauOut.
I often have reference DWG files that I bring into my SketchUp models. I will put these on their own Tag, sometimes making them dashed / etc. - then in LayOut I can adjust further by weight, dash style, etc.
I’m away from my computer otherwise I would share a screenshot.
The tags for the hardware, dashed lines, and the ghost lines for the notched panel have thinner linescale set than the others. The only lines created in LayOut are the leaders for the labels. FWIW, I don’t even bother setting dashes in SketchUp. There’s much more control in LayOut and it’s a per viewport thing there so a tag can have dash settings for one viewport and not in another.
Thank you Mike! I somehow completely missed this new feature (it’s been up since 2022). I sadly don’t use LayOut that often and do 95% of the work in SketchUp, but this is an awesome upgrade.
Maybe they will consider bringing this into SketchUp as well in a future upgrade. Seeing this makes me think it’s likely to happen sometime.
Yes, I fully agree that line weights in Sketchup would be a very handy feature. And while we are at it we should also be able to set the color of the lines.
Let me explain why… Even though we can set line weights in Layout it would be much faster and easier to do it inside Sketchup itself. Layout is still slow and clunky when working with tags and it would also make a lot of sense to have the same settings (dash, color, lineweight) in both Layout and Sketchup. This way we could set most of the line style inside sketchup and only use Layout to override this settings where needed.
Perhaps you could explain how it would work in SketchUp to show the same object with dashes in one view but not in another. What if I have objects A and B and in one view I want to show A with dashed edges and B with solid edges. In another scene I want to show B with dashed edges and A with solid edges. In LayOut that is easily handled. How would you propose that would work in SketchUp?
Perhaps it would be best to designate line weights by name like “Line Wgt #1”, “Line Wgt #2”, etc., then a Look-Up-Table interprets them for whatever purpose. For example, DWG out would use a table to assign line weights in the exported file. (This isn’t a new thing for DWG file sharing, BTW). Layout could read such a table for viewports, and perhaps use the paper scale to decide which table to use.
Something I have thought about but not experimented with is simulating line weight with grayscale color for the lines. Absolutely do-able with SU as it is now, but I’ve never played with it. It’s a small stretch from there to have a table to translate that grayscale color to line weight.
I don’t feel that’s necessary. For me it’s enough if override is available only to Layout.
But if someone feels that could be an important feature than the best way this could be done would be by adding additional cehckbox to scene settings to save line weight/type/color per scene.
Yes, I am familiar with those options. Unfortunately that’s not an option because we rely on all white with “color by tag” style to display model white with only section cuts as textures (curic section/Skalp).
I think this might be the single most valuable update sketchup could offer. So that you can easily set line weights for section cuts. It would need a way of providing a hierarchy, though, so you can set which tag would dominate in instances where materials in two tags touch.
The other valuable addition would be patters and textures to fills, other than using colour by tag. And patterns that can be viewed as vectors in layout. Then they would have a viable BIM software for architects to make 2D documentation and not essentially throw away beautiful models.
I don’t think vector fills are a viable option for SketchUp. A fairly small amount of, say, a dashed fill would bring SketchUp to standstill (as, btw, also happens in AutoCad). Vector hatching is a 2D thing from the 1980s.
that is true enough. Although workable in CAD if you are judicious with it.
I suppose maybe it isn’t that they are vectors so much as crips looking. It is still, unfortunately, an industry standard with 2D architectural documentation to have as you know concrete shown a certain way or block walls. in large scale details it might be one thing, but this is also needed in 1/4" or 1/8" plans. So I suppose what I mean is tidy way to get this. (that doesn’t involve glue and sellotape and a million work arounds). CAD and other BIM software do seem to accommodate.
