Managing scenes in SU

[sketchuparchive]

@eneroth3

Since In Model in itself is a category in itself adding sub-categories to it could be confusing

I didn’t say that their will be a sub-categories in " In Model " materials, the sub-categories are only for Layers and Scenes.

@eneroth3

Also it creates all sorts of problems as what would happen when a material is copied to another model?

I don’t think that will make any problem.
.[quote=“eneroth3, post:18, topic:18707”]
Would the group be copied to?
[/quote]

Yes, that would be useful if I don’t want to merge the copied material with a same material in the new scene, if I want merge it, we could delete the group then a popup will show up asking if I want to merge similar materials.[quote=“eneroth3, post:18, topic:18707”]
What if the same material exists but in another group?
[/quote]

Adding any material to any group that will make it unique, it’s already have a different name which is the Shortcode, and that Shortcode display in older versions of SketchUp.

@eneroth3

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.

A text field to filter materials and layers would be useful, but not all users memorizes the names of their materials, I think most of us select their materials from the thumbnail, also if the model sent to another firm they don’t know the names of the materials in the scene, so adding them to a groups with a related name will help them to browse the"Window Materials".

Thanks for your questions !

if any anyone have any suggestion, we would appreciated if he share it with us.

[sketchuparchive]

@eneroth3

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 this could be fixed by adopting the plugin “Skalp” as part of SketchUp, and make it compatible with large files. The idea of Layout Lines weights and colors inside Sketchup can also be used. One possible suggestion is:

A button for Sketchup layer window to show advance options for the layers, such as line weight and the Lines colors, which can be seen in Layout and in the printed document.

In addition, each scene can have a specific value for the Line weight and lines colors, which is similar to how Revit manages the line weight in each specific view.

I think that will make everything less complicated, so that the main task Layout will focus on adding Tags, Dimensions and Text.

[eneroth3]

LayOut is a separate program. Controlling any property with a name starting with “LO” from within SketchUp is extremely backwards. It’s a move in the exact opposite direction from trying to simplify things and make them more logical. The SketchUp-LayOut relationship is enough messy as it is.

[sketchuparchive]

@eneroth3

LayOut is a separate program. Controlling any property with a name starting with “LO” from within SketchUp is extremely backwards. It’s a move in the exact opposite direction from trying to simplify things and make them more logical. The SketchUp-LayOut relationship is enough messy as it is.

Where do you suggest to add sections, in SketchUp or in LayOut ?

[eneroth3]

Temporary ones to help you see into objects you are modeling should be in SketchUp. Section cuts however are much more suited for LayOut but I still haven’t come up with how the interface should work; that’s why I haven’t posted it yet.

[JQL]

In sketchup which would automatically draw section lines in plan view. We could the style them.

In layout we could also draw a line in a viewport and a section would be created in sketchup as well as a scene and a layout viewport.

Then we could do what we wanted in su and lo.

Change the section line in Lo and su updates. Move the section in su and lo updates.

A thing to consider would be a default section camera, aligned to it. Move the section, tick a box and the camera would update to zoom extents and the right position.

Right now, its just too much hand labour.

[remibro]

@eneroth3

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.

+1 to that

Having the ability to control the visible layers directly from Layout, would save in itself a good amount of scenes in SU

[eneroth3]

The more I think of it the less sense it makes to m that LayOut is even referencing scenes in SketchUp.

[remibro]

Exactly, like you said before, Sketchup is for modeling and Layout is for presentation. Keep it separate

[sketchuparchive]

@eneroth3

Temporary ones to help you see into objects you are modeling should be in SketchUp. Section cuts however are much more suited for LayOut but I still haven’t come up with how the interface should work; that’s why I haven’t posted it yet.

@JQL

In sketchup which would automatically draw section lines in plan view. We could the style them.

@remibro

Having the ability to control the visible layers directly from Layout, would save in itself a good amount of scenes in SU

To apply your suggestions, a lot of changes in the API are required. Also, it needs a lot of functions and options to control the visibility in Layout, as well as the idea of having sections inside layout requires new tools to add Hatches as Skalp does.

• In SketchUp model window, we could have the following:

• View
• Style
• Layers
• Outliner
• Objects Pattern

1- The View Menu could look like this::

We could choose between : Scenes, Standers Views and Sections (similar to how Skalp works),and there could be a 2 types of sections:

• Section Plane: it could work like Trimble Connect Section plane , and may have a way to add it to specific height, and have way to modify it( copy, rotate, move, cut, past).
  -Section Box.

-For Shadows and Fog, having an arrow to show an advance options could be useful.

2-In the Style menu, there could be an option to control the style for the sections, so it may have a drop menu to select the section we want and edit some options like: Visibility ,Active or not, Section Line Style, the Start and the End Form and size. These options could be edited when we create a plan view.
-Also may contain some options to control the depth cue.

3- The Layer menu could look like this:

4- The Outliner could contain some tools to select objects in the view , also some options to view hidden geometry, Hide and unhide selected objects, unhide unselected, unhide all and unhide last.

5-The Object Pattern Menu could look like this:

There could be some options to select objects and change their cut hatch and surface hatch, change the Pattern Fill Rules, and design the cut and surface pattern.

All off these menu ( View, Shadows, Fog , Style,Layers, Outliner, Objects Pattern) could be copied and pasted to other Sketchup Model by right clicking on the menu.

Even if these changes have been added, this will require to go back to SketchUp to do some editing in many cases.

[remibro]

You’ve done a bit of thinking there.
Sounds good

[sketchuparchive]

Also to keep this concept more organized:

• A popup window could display when we click" Add Section Plane" icon, from it we could choose the category for the Section Plane (Section View, Plan View, Elevation View, Ceiling Plan View,Details, etc) , and if we want to create a new category we could do that from that window.

-These categories could be saved with Templates from “Documents Setup” window , so we could define our Default categories.

-Also, the Section Line length in the Plan View, could be connected with the crop window for the Section View, so the length for the Section View (in the Ortho mode) will match the Section Line length in the Plan View.

-By right clinking on the “Section Lines” in the plan view, we could choose “open”, then all pages contain that section could be opened in a new tabs, so we could edit it quickly.

[JQL]

I wasn’t able to follow on all the implications of everything you came up with, but thank you for such a constructive post.

It feels you are wanting to make Skalp integrated into sketchup. But it is already available and a nice plugin. So why would you want that to become even further integrated?

Integrating Skalp into Sketchup is a bit like asking for sketchup to have an integrated renderer. I even read about people stating they would pay more for an integrated renderer? If so, why wouldn’t they buy a rendering plugin of their choice? Developed by people who know all about Rendering software…

Of course your post is not about skalp, and you have a lot of nice features there.

I probably missed but would add only one more. Don’t autoupdate sections and allow us to draw on their groups. If you force me to have an autoupdateble section, I die!

[sketchuparchive]

The idea of integrating an auto update hatched sections into SketchUp is related to how the future could be for exploring and understanding 3D details in real time. Since Trimble are focusing on construction, that idea could add a great value for SetchUp if all Sketchup users from the AEC industry could add an auto update hatched sections in all the new versions of SketchUp.

And if it has been integrated (in Sketchup or in Layout), the API could be programmed in a way it could work fast with a huge number of objects.

-If we want to draw a 2d details on the section groups and keep the autoupdate sections active , there could many ways to do that:
-Currently in Sketchup, we could unlock the Skalp section. cut the faces out of the group, paste it in place and group it again, then we could draw our 2D Sketch in this group.

-If the suggestion is integrated, maybe we could have away to draw a 2D sketch on Section planes (in Sketchup or in Layout).

All of that are just concepts.

[gsharp]

Please no automatic scene grouping…

I don’t think trimble programmers knows all the ways

their SU users want to organise their data structures.

And I am sure they are not like MICROSOFT who seems to think they know everything and treats us all like simpletons

[MikeWayzovski]

Great concept, perhaps the ‘create group from slice’ option could be used for that in combination of the classifiyng system : if a solid is sliced, automatically add a face and, solids which are classified automatically inherets the (standard) pattern as material

[eneroth3]

Creating geometry in the model is only a work around for SketchUp lacking a cut surface feature. In an upcoming version SketchUp really should be able to draw the cut faces on the rendering level for each solid being cut without having to create entities for those faces.

[MikeWayzovski]

Yes it would be a workaround, but since SketchUp is a surface modeler and not a solid modeler, this would require less work to implement in the software.

[JQL]

@sketchuparchive too.

That it is able to do that is one thing. However, that work around is VERY useful. Otherwise how could I draft details on sections.

Sincerely, when I started using SU, I thought that auto section cut generation was essential. That create group from slice was cumbersome.

Then I found Tig’s sectioncutface plugin. Which allowed taht section group to be generated very fast. I could then, very quickly create sectioned drawings in small scales.

I also found that it failed sometimes. For it to work flawlessly I had to create watertight models.

This was a decision point in my modelling workflow.

I could model very fast with sketchup. Better still, my workflow allowed me to change the model as quickly and that is key. For design iteraction, being able to do that is what matters.

However, the resulting model is not, and it will never be, a solid or a group of solids. So it is really excellent for everyrhing but autosections.

Then Skalp showed up and with it the promise of autosection hatching and seamless export to CAD.

The implications were:

• Either keep my model sloppy, full of handy tricks and mixed with all sort of rendering auxiliaries which all forced me to fix sectioncutfaces manually (edit section, use edgetools2 inspect tools and fix it in a couple of minutes) so I could then hatch it manualky, draw details, send to layout and present or export it.
• Or turn the modelbinto a huge collection of solids for each part and detail and then have autosections auto hatch it and seamlessly export to CAD or use layout.

It was a nobrainer. I chose not to model in solids, and keep my design iteraction untouched.

So, if you guys want to have aitosections from solids, please be my guest BUT please, don’t make them hide my hand drawn ones… I have a couple of solids in my model too, but they are usually in fact built of a ton of layers that i hand draw on sections. I would be mad to model all of them and i dont want them to hide my drawing on faces.

[eneroth3]

I really don’t see how implementing the hack could be easier than fixing the graphics pipeline so it finds cut faces of solids.