Hi all,
If I have a building facing say southwest, and I set my view to Plan View, is there any way I can rotate the view so my plan sits horizontally in Layout for print?
I would prefer to not rotate the actual model as I have detailed ground works in. I would expect the camera view could be changed somehow. Moving the axis does not seem to work.
Neil
The ‘Top View’ button for plan view in SketchUp uses the systems green/red plane to show your model with green up and red to the right on screen. A scene can be saved.
Alternatively you can use the (on any axis in empty space) right click > ‘Allign View’ method to get SketchUp to use the current green/red plane to do the same thing. This however applies on the current green and red axes, not necessarily on the fixed system’s axes.
So in a few steps:
Excellent, thank you! However, for anyone else reading this, the trick seemed to be to select any face (rather than ‘axis’) in the plane you want to square up for layout, and indeed right click and ‘Align View’.
Not forgetting that we can then right click on things we don’t want to see and select ‘hide’ then create a new Scene. Top stuff!
N
You can use Eneroth Relative Top View to get a top view that gets its rotation from the previous view, e.g. an elevation aligned to a face.
Another option is to use the plugin to set the north of your model
In short: (again)
… The way I suggested to select the face and right click works really well; it aligns to the current zoom level also, and no need to move the axis…
N
I must be missing something. What face are you aligning to in order to get the plan view rotated…
My first choice would be to do as Eric showed and rotate the viewport but if I had set up a scene in SketchUp to show that rotated plan view, I’d do as @Wo3Dan showed or use Eneroth3’s Relative Top View.
You can also easily rotate the viewport inside Layout.
I’m wondering if this OP was actually looking for a way to present an elevation. To make the model sit “horizontally” in the viewport? Then their method using align view to face, while cumbersome would makes sense?
That could be the case while the rest of us were referring to the top, plan view becasue that was what was asked for in the thread title and the original post.
I most often have two models: one is the building modeled most naturally around the starting, default origin and axes and use the set north plugin if needed, and a second model for the site oriented with the green axis as north.
I’ve found @eneroth3’s plugin mentioned in her post to work well for orienting the top view of the site model the way I’d like to see in on screen and on paper. That works down the line with Layout, or other work flow, not to mention just working on the model on screen. Once you set the view you need to save it as a scene.
Wow Dan3, all,
Sorry just got to this. I did mess up… I was talking about Plan view originally. I quickly tried aligning the view to a face in Elevation and it squared up. I wrongly assumed this would work in Plan. Obviously not as I need to align 2 planes. Your advice to right click on the axis (blue in my case) and choose align view works perfectly. Thank you! The blessing is I also discovered a quick way to square up Elevation views 
…BTW, I also add dimensions in Sketchup, just to save me using Layout until the very last min. Does this sound reasonable or am I missing something?
N
Your solution, align view (to face) may work in certain cases (face in facade > correct elevation). For SketchUp may set up proper R/G axes with the operation. May…!
My solution involves setting up the axes yourself the way you want. It always works when the follow-up action is right clicking on an axis > align view. It’s a guaranteed general solution. R/G can be any way you like.
