Add an option to draw to scale in document in lieu of within a bounding box.
What do you mean? That feature already exists in Layout.
It already exists if drawing inside a bounding box, thus meaning if you click outside the box, you need to double click to edit! This can be painful if designing a larger work eg; a floor plan!
I think you’re using the wrong tool, layout is meant to work in tandem with sketchup, you usually make the 3D model on sketchup, some people also use it to make 2D drawings, layout is for making construction documentation not designing or drawing. You should use another software like QCad, draftsight, Autocad or whatever cad program you prefer to make what you’re requesting layout to do.
I think you’re missing it’s true calling! Layout is the ultimate tool for this purpose, simply because it’s so fast and the big one, I can use “duplicate page” to run multiple iterations of a design until I get it perfect! I’ve designed 100’s of homes using this as a design tool, admittedly I just do concepts for homes, and I’ve put a few other (traditional CAD) companies onto developing their concepts using Layout. Even if they’ve got to redraw it in CAD, LayOut works at the speed of a pencil to develop concepts!
This design took around 12 hours and that’s will probably 15-20 iterations, from scratch!
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I’m not telling you to stop using layout the way you’re using it, I just told you that the developers when added that tool weren’t thinking on converting layout into a 2D Cad software, scale drawing is a great tool for me if I want to make quick drawings of details or something that doesn’t require much effort, for creating 2D plans y create the entire model on sketchup, set some scenes and create all the 2D documents a lot faster, developers focus on tools or features that will benefit the most, probably they could improve the scale drawing on layout but personally I don’t think they will, cause most of the people who do what you want to do on layout, either do it on sketchup or another cad software.
However, the developers are adding more 2D drawing tools that in effect makes Layout more “CAD” like. Indeed the introduction of new dedicated 2D scrapbooks details (that take their cue from elements of Mike Brightman’s workflow) and the trim and extend tools, this signals some directional intent.
There is no “one” way to use SketchUp > Layout – I for one create basic 3D monochrome models that I use as a template for my viewports in Layout. For clients I will add a little extra flourish to the models for visual effect.
In Layout I will draw construction details and site plans exclusively using Layout’s 2D native tools.
As for Richard’s request, I second it – even if one does not use Layout as Richard does, inadvertently exiting the scaled drawing group is a pain and a way to lock editing within a scaled group or set the 2D scale per page would be very welcome.
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I understand what you mean and I have been caught out with it as well. Perhaps a slightly different approach might help. Make the first thing you draw in the “Scaled Drawing” a set of corner marks to set the bounding box limits e.g. the page corners. You may then be less inclined to accidentally click outside the scaled drawing area.
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I did trial doing this, but flicking between pages and copying sections of one iteration to another becomes a bit problematic! It turned out to be faster just adding the mm to any scaling number! Easy when working in 1:100.
It actually didn’t matter so much previously as I could just scale an object, and that would still require an input of Xmm, though now that I have to draw everything since they broke scaling, it becomes more difficult.
Paul, I know we’ve had the dicussion before, but this darn new inferencing thing is absolutely doing my head in! I’m all over it as I use LayOut for pretty much every thing I do, but I’m still challenged by it!
I’d suggest 80% of the time we want to grab something at a corner, and fighting the scale handle is a real pain, waving around to grab the corner is often twice as long as the move I want to do! The other 20% of the time we want to grab stuff at the midpoint, and just as often you catch the scale handle.
Where it’s a real pain is if the point you want to grab something at a corner and that corner is behind the corner of another object, you either have to copy > paste and grab or bring forward and grab or nudge away and grab. It’s such a time waster!
I know I’m banging on, but the pain is felt right through to my butt!
Grabbing the right point when you want to move something can be a pain in both SU and LO. The problem is that there can be so many inference points close together. You often find you have to zoom right in to select the one you want. Fine, but continually zooming in and out is a pain and a time waster.
One solution would be a way to select, or deselect, certain types of inference points on the fly. That might be made to work, say, by first hovering near an inference point (so that it gets highlighted), then pressing the Option key to get a dropdown list of inference points to select from. If you wanted a corner that was close to an intersection, you could deselect intersections temporarily to avoid confusion. Obviously, you would not want to be doing that at each selection, just when the need arose. I think this facility might have existed in other CAD software for some time.
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I hear you Richard.
I guess it’s your specific workflow – but yes, for example, where you have corners close by or adjacent it’s not perfect (although I feel I’ve developed a bit of a knack when this occurs).
What springs to my mind is that the clamour to make Layout more like SketchUp has ended us up with this arrangement which is not quite perfect – indeed I have argued that changes to Layout should be made such that they work well in Layout not so that people can transition from SketchUp and Layout tools seamlessly because they work the same!
Layout is 2D and SketchUp is 3D – what works well in one will necessarily work well in the other.
My solution for LayOut at least is to maintain the current “grab an inference” functionality so it does work just as SketchUp, and use the original native inferencing if an inference hasn’t been preselected.
LayOut is a page layout tool, and thus should function as one, needing workarounds to make a selection is cumbersome, particularly as it worked so well previously!
Exactly! Layout is a page layout tool, not a 3D modelling tool!
I feel like this might be a better tool for your 2d initial workflow @RichardJeffrey but I have not had time to play with it yet.
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I would definitely use that instead of layout for drawing floor plans, but apparently some people agree with this requests, I use the scale drawing feature but I’ve never drawn an entire floor plan with it, just a few simple details, for everything else I just use sketchup, even for 2D drawings sometimes.
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I did trial it when first released, it’s a seriously funky and powerful tool, but unlike LayOut it doesn’t have any way to test multiple interations!! Layout’s duplicate page function is ideal for this, this is my number 1 reason for loving Layout. Otherwise, there are multiple tools to complete the task!