When I right click on the view port set up in Layout of my Sketchup model… I cant find the Lock view port in the list of scroll down text options? When adding text and dimensions the view ports keep getting moved or selected 95 percent of the time…Quite annoying!
Thanks for the help!!!
Hi,
With a viewport pre-selected, right click to bring up the context menu… from there Lock is found, fourth option down from the top.
…at least that’s what I see on my Layout version for the Mac OS. Under the Windows OS it might be slightly different—but I would certainly expect it to be available on the right click context menu.
My 4th one down reads (Move to Layer). This is for Layout. I lock stuff all the time in Sketchup. Not a Layout expert yet, just started to use it seriously recently.
Windows and 2018 pro, locking is 4th item down still. I take it you’re not using 2018 then, what version are you using? I believe Locking were added in recent years.
The problem with locking Viewports I find is that if you update the model reference, the viewports are not updated and you get the yellow warning triangle.
What I do is have a layer “Viewport” and place the viewport on that. Get the viewport positioned fairly tightly around the contents. I don’t tend to lock the viewport at all as I know where it is because of the way I place the boundary.
If you are having difficulty you can lock the Viewport layer and it will update with the model reference when it is updated. You will have to unlock the layer to copy/paste the viewport to other pages, but you can just lock it again before adding text/dimensions. Put text and dimensions layers higher up in the list than the viewport layer and they will always show. (LayOut layers have hierarchy unlike SketchUp).
Top tip: If you save a template with the “Viewport” layer active, when you send the model to LayOut the viewport will always land on the “Viewport” layer, so you don’t have to move it to the correct layer.
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Locking viewports was added with LO 2018.
If you put viewports on their own layer, you can lock the layer when you don’t want to risk modifying it.
That’s the problem ! Thanks for clarifying. I am using 2017 PRO. That’s a really helpful bell and whistle to add. I think I’ll have to upgrade again from 2017 to 2018!
Thanks to you all !!!
You’ll also get features like Scaled Drawing which is quite handy.
Thanks Dave, I don’t mind upgrading if there is actually something of real value has been added.
Matte
Thanks Ian, I think you method will help reducer problems a lot, it’s just when I am adding text and dimensions all over the place on top over various view ports. I’ll give your method a try Thanks !!!
It’s actually wisdom passed on to me from the @DaveR 
(that I hope I got right)
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I’m sure we went over that, Ian.
I generally have several layers for viewports because I’m often stacking them and putting each one in the stack on a different layer makes them easier to access. Then above those viewport layers there are layers for dashed lines, hatching, dimensions and other text. The dimension and text layers are topmost in the stack. Doing it that way means that the dimensions and text will always be on top of the viewports and other drawing entities.
I also rarely lock viewports since locking layers is easy.
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Sweeeet! Thanks to you and Dave. It works as NEEDED. I moved all my view ports to a newly made view port layer, moved it to the bottom of the stack and locked it. All is well (For now anyway!). The Layout thing is finally starting to make sense. After I get these 10 drawings all set up and up I’ll have to go struggle some more with my “Xrefed” excel files. They do not want to behave very well !!! Thanks again to you both !
Well it still beats my first Sketchup version 4 !!!
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