Section line weight in Layout

I’ve been trying to figure out how to effect section cut line weights in layout. I have been setting the section line weight in SU, saving, then updating the drawings, but I don’t see any effect in Layout.

Is there a way in layout to set this value?

Thanks.

There are a few ways to control the line-weight of Section cuts in LayOut. The simplest, and my favorite is create a group from the slice of your section. Several folks have had great results with this approach, including Nick Sonder. Once you have a sliced group, create a separate scene for it, then stack that scene on a viewport of your section. From there, you can customize the line weight, or even explode the group for more control of individual line weights.

For a more advanced technique (that ends up being a bit faster once you master it), check out Mike Brightman’s workflow for weighting lines in plan view drawings.

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Thanks Mark.

Interesting technique and I’ll give it a try. I was hoping for some simple way I was missing to get sketch up to save the section line weight as part of a scene.

Regards and much appreciated.

@pois Are you talking about the actual line weight of the section cut? If you’re updating this value in a style, you need to make sure you’re saving the changes to the style. Then, attach this style to a scene that you’re exporting to a LayOut viewport, or assign the style to a viewport directly from the SketchUp Model panel in LayOut, in the Styles tab.

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Matt,

you’re a genius! I’ve been using sketch up since V2 and before google, and I’ve never figured out I need to make a new style, name and save it, and then use in layout. I’ve done all sorts of dumb work-arounds in the past.

many thanks!

P

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You’re welcome :slight_smile:

The best workflow in my opinion is to save scenes in SketchUp, so the scene remembers the style. If you try to save a scene, but you’ve modified your style, SketchUp is smart enough to tell you that you haven’t saved the style and will give you the option to do so. You’ve probably seen the window pop up dozens of times when saving a scene.

When you save styles, it’s only saving it locally to that model you’re in. To save it for future use you have to bring the secondary selection pane down and drag the style into a folder.

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It’s also worth mentioning you can create a new Template and add the new style to that as well.

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Thanks again (all),

I was wondering how to save for later use.

Now if only SU/Layout had a function to assign line weights to relative distance from the section plane.

P

Did you think of using Fog ?

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I have tried every so often, but I’ve never mastered it. I’d rather not to have to render in layout as raster to get the effect. Looking to more closely replicate line weights al-la old fashioned hand drafting.

If you know a good tutorial, I’d love to try again.

Thanks

P

Traditional hand drafting usually uses three lineweights: A heavy line for objects that are cut, a medium line for objects viewed in profile and a thin one for features on a surface. Some standards only use two, thick for cut profiles and a thinner one for all the others.

This is actually rather easy to replicate in SketchUp and LayOut.

In SketchUp, use the style settings for Profiles and Section cut edges to set the relative thicknesses of these compared to edges on a surface that always have a thickness of 1 (meaning 1 pixel on your SketchUp screen).

Then, in LayOut, the SketchUp Model tray has in its Styles tab a Line weight setting that is used to determine what lineweight is used as the base (corresponding to the “1” in SketchUp) when printing or exporting that model viewport, whether it uses raster or vector rendering. The profile lines and section cut edges will be rendered as multiples of that lineweight.

Anssi

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A post was split to a new topic: Thick lines when moved to LayOut

Whilst this method works a problem with it is that the Profiles box and Section Cuts boxes in Sketchup Styles menu only allow the input of integers and not decimals. This makes adjustment of linewidths a rather blunt instrument.

For profiles the profile edge is a minimum of double the width of the base linewidth, and the section line will be a minimum of double the profile width. Quite harsh and may not give the desired appearance.

If the Profiles and Section Cuts boxes would allow the input of decimals, to ideally two places in the way that Layout’s lineweight box does, then it would be possible to achieve an array of 3 pen sizes in whatever thickness and ratio is desired, thus creating a more flexible system and professional output.

If anyone knows how to do this please let me know. Otherwise I’ll add it to the Sketchup feature request list.

In theory you are right. In practice, if you want your drawing output to follow standards, the requirements (at least on my part of the world) state that

  • the maximum allowed number of lineweights is 3.
  • the minimum relative thickness ratio of lineweights is 2.
    So all standard lineweight ratios can be achieved by setting the thicknesses in Sketchup to 1:2:4.
    Research shows that people’s eyes (and reproduction equipment) do not distinguish ratios that are much smaller than these.

Anssi

Hi,

I use the 1:2:4 ratios too and agree that it provides a workable, if inflexible, system. There are times though when some adjustment would be useful and the addition of decimals in the input boxes might hopefully be an easy way to implement that. I’ll add it as a feature request.

Regards