There must be a way for fixtures (toilets, tubs, sinks, etc) to appear as solid rather than transparent in Layout. My problem is that I am adding hatches to define the material of my floors and unless I draw a complicated polygon around every fixture, my floor hatch shows over the the fixture. Here is a screen shot:
PS - Originally, my documents were rendered in a hybrid style in Layout, but the building department demanded black and white drawings. So my solution in Layout was to render the viewport in hidden line style and add graphic materials as hatches. If there is another way I could have done this, I’d love to know. This has been a real PITA.
The hatch must be on a layer bellow the skp model viewport layer, if you use layers, or right click and send the hatch back, but it’s better to work with layers.
Can you share the file to give you an accurate solution?
Are you placing the fixtures in SKP or LO?
Are they 2d or 3d?
If 2d in SKP are they ‘filled in’ as surfaces? Are they on their own tag (layer) in SKP?
If you are placing the fixtures in SKP and drawing over the plans in LO to hatch areas you may need to stack your viewports, so that you have a second view of your SKP file over the hatch - this would mean only the fixtures are visible in a scene in SKP, assuming they are filled in and solid, to not allow visibility below them.
I do this often with ghosting layers - so my layers in LO are:
SKP2 - turn on only tags that I want visible over the background, and make sure the background is transparent. I will do this for reflected ceiling plans, etc.
Ghost - I use this in LO for hatches or transparency fill to ghost out or cover what is on the layers below it VV
SKP1 - the main view of the model that will be partially hidden by the 2 layers above ^^
You would setup 2 nearly identical scenes in SKP, then make sure they are aligned in LO. Toggle the visibility of the top SKP2 layer off, draw your hatches on the ghost or middle layer, turn the top layer back on.
I have used layers. I have a hatch layer that is below the Viewport layer. But fixtures are not solid. So it seems the issue is how the hidden line style works. Only walls are hatched as solid. I would like for there to be an option for creating black and white drawings in Layout that properly interpret the solid objects within a model into a solid white object.
I am in Hidden Line but I am rendering the viewport in vector, not raster. So yes, I see that is my conundrum. When I changed everything to hidden line to make it black and white, the drawings no longer had any materials defined. So I resorted to using hatches. I created a hatch layer and placed it under the viewport layer. Since I did not stack a viewport that only showed the walls, I had the problem that my floors blocked any hatch. I now see that it would have been simpler to create the stacked viewports. My solution, although quicker in the short term, created more complexity. Ugh. This project is under construction, so I am not going to fuss over the drawings any more. I just needed to make a quick change to a small area.
Ahh, I see - I rarely use Vector, so I didn’t realize it rendered differently.
This does seem like you should go to the Layout sub-forum and make a feature request and / or file a bug report. Seems really odd that they render only solid in Hybrid or Raster, and not Vector.
Not quite following the specifics of this thread, and correct me if I’m off track, but for viewport stacking to work you need vector to not render solids so that you can see to the next viewport below…
True, but if you isolate your fixtures / furniture etc. on separate tags, you can quickly duplicate the scene in SKP, then turn everything off except what you want to be visible on the floating viewport - this can be rendered in hybrid or raster, to hide what is below.
Windows and doors are tricky in that you usually want them to be cut by the section plane.
I often do this with things that I don’t want sliced by the section cut - so I might put cars / trucks on separate layer and stack a viewport when working on a custom barn, etc.
Or use one scene and stack viewports using that scene. Set the top one to show only the tags given to the fixtures and furniture and render that one as Hybrid while the viewport underneat is rendered as Vector. No need for duplicate scenes in SketchUp.
Yes, I see this is the solution. Always obvious in hindsight. Geez I have wasted so much time. I should have come to the forum sooner. Thanks to you all.
