Managing scenes in SU

On larger projects, I tend to build up a large number of scenes, which usually relate to drawing sheets in LO. This means that tabs get smaller and it gets increasingly difficult to navigate them. I am not sure how this could be improved. Maybe you could allow tabs to run into a second line (at the expense of real estate, I know). Alternatively, perhaps you could group scenes and organise them with drop down boxes. It’s a similar problem to managing layers but there are apps you can get for that. AFAIK, there is no app for scene management. Maybe someone will prove me wrong?

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Well there is the Scene Manager inspector.
Window > Scenes
You can turn off Scene Tabs, then hide the Details pane in the inspector, and then you have a simple scrollable list.

But your FR is still valid in that the Scene Manager inspector could use some more nifty features like collapsible / expandable Scene Groups.

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Dan

I didn’t realise you could use Scene manager to swop scenes but I find that you can by double clicking a scene in the scrollable list. That does get round much of the problem, I agree.

I didn’t know you could turn off scene tabs either. I don’t know how though.

Perhaps Scene Groups and Layer Groups might turn up in a future version of SU?

Simon

These are two of the most commonly requested features. So, keep asking and maybe Trimble will give them priority!

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View>Scene tabs, of course!

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Agree with all the above - We just need something to group scenes into logical structures

Just so the tabs don’t extend to infinity

That would be a great first step

Regards

I’m struggling with the number of scenes too now.

This is what my scenes tab looks like:

Although scrolling through the scenes window is an option, it just isn’t as quick as using the tabs.

I might suggest that Sketchup developers do something like this:

Either the user manually groups scenes, or as is my preference, scenes are automatically grouped according to the scene name. So scenes with the same prefix, (text before a hyphen “-”) would be grouped together. For example, scenes with the names “Section-Big section” and “Section-Little one”, would be grouped in “Section”, and “Big section” and “Little one” would be shown when you click on the group.

I think automatic grouping according to prefix would be easier to implement for the devs too, as it wouldn’t involve adding a new kind of scene grouping data into the model structure (and creating a new API for it).

While you’re at it, maybe you could do the same thing with the Layers panel!

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Great idea.

[And this to make up 20 characters - why??]

+1 from me

This great suggestion has a strong relationship to using Layout. I hope this feature request is implemented in the very next release (or update) because it certainly would make it easier to develop condocs.

Since SketchUp switched to yearly editions (ie v2013+,) new features are only introduced with major version release.

Re LayOut integration, would prefixes translate to LayOut page numbers / names ?
Ie, if 4 SketchUp scenes had the same prefix, would they be all translated to viewports on the same LayOut page ?

This is probably better answered by @TommyK, because my response was directed to his post, but IMO, it would be a good thing if all of the above were incorporated into SU. The only caveat I would offer is that viewports need not be necessarily restricted to the same Layout page…the option for placing viewports as desired should continue to exist.

I don’t think the grouping of tabs in SketchUp should necessarily be translated to LayOut. I think the problem to solve is the navigational issue in sketchup, not how viewports are organised in LayOut.

There could always be a plugin that does that in future.

That it what I was aiming at.

There is a simple plugin now (by the SketchUp Team,) using the new LayOut C API, that just creates a separate LayOut sheet for each SketchUp scene.
http://extensions.sketchup.com/en/content/create-layout-file

My questions were aimed at how this kind of plugin would be modified to give the user options for creating the distribution of SketchUp scene viewports to LayOut sheets,… given the extra information this feature brings to the process.

But I see your point in that this may confuse the more simple request, which I do love actually. (I always love letting the user use it their way.)


The U in UI means “user”.

This suggestion looks great, but I think it should be added to the scene window and the context menu in Layout.

Maybe there will be some standards Shortcodes will be defined which will be display only if the file would be opened in older versions of SketchUp, these images explain the idea:
The new versions of SketchUp:

The old versions of SketchUp:

And could be added to the layer window as well:
The new versions of SketchUp:

The old versions of SketchUp:

I think that will take SketchUp to a new level of organization and convention workflow.

If anyone have a better suggestion please share it with us.

Best,
Mousa Abu Doush

I have noticed that is one of the most problem users are countered in large projects inside SketchUp is how SketchUp organize the model, so I am adding the following feature request as well:

Material Groups:

I 'm sure that most of us here when they are creating construction document and collaborate with other firms, the “Material Window” will become very messy, design material will be mixed with Skalp Construction Hatch Materials, and some times adding a reference models inside SketchUp will add a lot of Materials to the Material Window which will make it hard to browse.

So having a Group Material option will keep the Material Window organized and easy to browse:

ate a new Group by clicking the "Details " icon.
3- We could delete the Group by right clicking on it and choose Delete option, a popup will be appear to choose what we will do with the content of the Group (similar to the layers deleting popup):

Also if we want to import any format to SketchUp, we could change the import option setting to do the following:
1- Import objects Layers as a Group,
2 -Import objects Materials as a Group
3- Default Name of the Group will be the file name of the imported objects.

-In the older Versions of Sketchup, these Groups will be display as a short code before the name of the materials(Similar to my previous suggestion for the Layers Group).

I think the real problem here is that the SketchUp+Layout workflow require a huge number of scenes. Often multiple scenes are identical, except for one property such as the camera position or active layers.

I think the solution to that would be to control views from within LayOut, not SketchUp, which also more logically separates the two programs into 3d drawing and producing 2d presentations. I think all the viewing options (layer visibility states, camera position, fog, shadow, style etc) should be saved on a per viewport basis. then there could be an eyedropper tool in LayOut that lets you copy these properties between viewports. the tool would have options for what to pick up so you could pick up the drawing style from one viewport and assign to another without affecting its camera.

Currently a lot of these things can be controlled from within LayOut but gets overridden as soon as the model is reloaded which really is a trap for new users. This is not intuitive at all.

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While I understand what you are after with grouping In Model materials I don’t know if it’s the best solution to the problem. Since In Model in itself is a category in itself adding sub-categories to it could be confusing. Also it creates all sorts of problems as what would happen when a material is copied to another model? Would the group be copied to? What if the same material exists but in another group?

I would prefer a text field to filter materials in the currently shown category. This way you could easily find materials that you know the name of, or even just the start/prefix of the name, without having to scroll back and fourth looking for it. This would also be very useful for components and maybe even scenes and layers.

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This would actually be very nice. We always work with Stacked viewports.

Grouping of Scenes, Layers and a quick search filter for In Model materials and Components, always has been on my top list of priorities.

If we take that FR as very good to have already, I don’t see why not improving on it. Having some way of autostacking scenes in layout, and then further auto stacking them in model space when exporting to CAD would be NICE! It would save me 2-5 days of work per project.

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+1 . I have been advocating this for years. The integration is currently overly complicated, not at all sketchup-like.

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