I design floor plans for exhibits at the museum I work for, using LayOut to share elevation design packages with our graphics department. There are often instances where one large vinyl graphic is being produced for a series of connected walls that are not in the same plane. For example, the graphic wraps around two corners. Because of this, I need to be able to get a dimension of each wall section AND the overall length. I’d like to be able to show each section of wall in one viewport as if each one is being viewed from the front. The only way I can figure out how to show that is to create separate viewports and then align them to show they are a continuous wall, but that often leads to incorrect dimensions when I try to get an overall length. Is there a way to do what I’m trying to do? Thanks.
If you want to use a single dimension in LayOut the simplest method would be to create a single flat rectangle with the graphic applied as a texture and a separate scene for it.
Setting up several scenes looking at each wall and making it look like a continuos flat thing in LO is simple enough but the Dimension tool won’t work around corners. You could edit the dimension and manually type in what it is supposed to be if you want.
So you mean, just draw a rectangle over the walls I’ve laid out in the illustration, and dimension that? I guess that is one option.
Or at least draw a rectangle the same height as the wall and with as long as the total length of the three walls (or however long the graphic is supposed be) and paint the graphic as a texture on it.
It really doesn’t need to be a complex thing.
BTW, the “wrong” dimension in your image isn’t wrong. It’s the straight line distance between the points at either side.
You are almost there.
for your example you need three scenes.
In each scene, you need to change the axis so that the front camera view is looking straight at the wall. This is accomplished by using the Axis tool in the two angled wall scenes. Select the left corner of the wall and assign the red axis to the length of the wall and the green axis towards the back of the wall. Change the camera to front and parallel projection. Update.
Now you have three viewports that are front camera views of each wall. Scale them all to your optimal scale and then line them up. I think you will find that this solves your problem.
Setting up the three scenes to show the elevations and aligning the viewports in LO is simple enough. It’s dimensioning across those viewports that can’t be done automatically. Example:
In LO with the three viewports aligned to look like a single flat wall. Even thought the elevations are laid out flat the overall dimension is the point to point dimension in the model.
The simple thing would be to draw a rectangle that is 40 feet long (or whatever it is in the OP’s model) and apply the graphic texture to that and create a single scene to show it.
Makes sense, thanks!
Good deal.