Madness
True! Imho its better than exploding viewports to get linework. Once it’s setup it works.
What’s really crazy is that if SketchUp tags would get separated by layer in a CAD export from Layout, only two viewports would be needed. If section lines would be hidden a single viewport would suffice.
Separating layers is mandatory here, so we can create DWF files for permits.
I’m amazed your local agencies require .dxf instead of .pdf. All the building departments I deal with in CA, NV and CO use Blubeam to review drawings.
Edit…DWF.
Yes I know. It’s annoying. Autodesk hit them agencies hard here. I know why but won’t go into that. Software licencing was envolver and now we have to deal with municipalities using Autodesk Design Review… Which is deprecated.
Anyway I used to change layers in the CAD file but juxtaposing viewports is easier as a change in Sketchup is reflected in the CAD file by hitting export.
There are many fails in CAD exports and dealing with some engineers is a pain. Having layer separation would ease it.
Thanks a lot for this update. Stacking viewports is a drag. Having a tag setting that is consistent and easy to manage is key to enhance productivity. To this end I would suggest: We also need to able to lock tags, so that snapping gets easy. I find that snapping while dimensioning my drawing is difficult when the geometry is crowded, and I want to measure just geometry on a few layers, like walls, so other geometry should me locked. So I want the ability to lock layers in a way that makes them not affect snapping.
I find I still need two stacked viewports in order to separate the measured elements from the others…
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That’s true. When you say lock, do you mean hide?
Or would you still like to see the drawing, but have snapping affect only certain layers?
It’s true that snapping delays Layout a lot, in a lot of ways. Avoiding snapping to specific LO Layers and SU Tags would be really helpful!
Im thinking typically in a plan view that I would turn snapping off for most layers and have them active for mostly just walls, but still see the other geometry . Especially where inner walls meet outer walls its hard to find a snapping point. Maybe there’s a column there that presents confusing geometry as well… It seems Layout finds snaps that are not on the section plane easier than the ones you want, that are typically ON the section plane… The easiest (for me) would be to set a few snappable layers and have the others just as graphics. I could always do that with two stacked viewports, but that introduces strange view-order issues.
so the direction that layout is heading, abandoning the stacked viewport thing, is great.
in the old days, in AutoCAD, if there was confusing geometry, I would typically zoom in and out a lot while measuring, and then the lineweights would be set, but not visible in the drawing, where my lines would be razor thin. Maybe there’s a clue here for Layout as well, one could have a keyboard shortcut toggling lineweight visibility on and off, to really get good control of what you are dimensioning.
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Theres a lot to go through in order for having just one viewport in Layout to work…What about the ability to set different section colors to different layers, like having your inner walls another color than your outer walls… And what about the colors of ones windows in plan view. One would typically want those to show as white regardless of the color in 3D views. Settings that are set to the scene in sketchup, and overridden in stacked viewports in Layout, would maybe all have to be organized around tags instead…
Great feature. Doing higher end architectural work and so far no stacked viewports required, nice time saver! Actually line weights/colors controlled similar to AutoCad.
Your issue makes total sense to me.
My projects often have fairly complex meshes for the ground surface, with simpler linework over top for site boundaries and walls Those complex meshes can create a snapping nightmare in LayOut. The numerous snapping points also makes Raster mode very difficult to use for dimensioning, since you’re never quite certain which edge or point you’re snapping to.
I agree it would be best to make some layers “non-snappable” within LO. It seems like this would solve a few issues around snapping and performance. Another option could be to make SKP components “non annotatable” in a similar way to how some can be made to not cast & receive shadows. We could use that for trees, furniture, site terrain, etc.
Another improvement could be for the snapping to be ‘context aware’ - for example - if you click to annotate a dimension on a site boundary, then your dimension tool will guide you to click the second point on a site boundary, not on a wall.
This means LayOut is only hunting for dimensions on the layer (or component) that you first clicked on, not on every other layer (you would need to hit Shift to over-ride this function if you wanted to dimension the distance between a site boundary and a wall).
Generally the tradeoffs of using stacked viewports is hardly worthwhile for me. I already have enough Layout layers, plus SKP Scenes, styles, and tonnes of updates & re-renders to manage across a big project. Plus it doesnt really make dimensioning easier if you have to keep turning on and off layers to see what you’re doing.
Stacking works okay if you are doing lots of similar pages with repeatable content, and can set up the viewports as a template that works for each.
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Section line weight and section color could be controlled in layout per tag, that would bring us towards the goal of just one viewport, and no stacking. Then the heavy lift of getting your scenes to look right would be moved from SketchUp, as a clean modeling environment, to Layout, where everything about output graphics is controlled. This could be a nice conceptual division of the two. It’s important to not make confusion with overrides and settings all over the place.
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It also seems to me that having the graphics of the Sketchup scene controlled in both application is what produces the need for Layout to actually render the scene again and again, with every update to the link between SketchUp and Layout, to then apply the overrides before the viewport is up to date. If all the styling is being done in Layout to basic SketchUp geometry, maybe one could envision instant updates in a live link, without saving first in SketchUp, and without manually updating the scenes.
I guess I’m not understanding how stacking viewports is so difficult and such a pain? It literally takes seconds and is the only way to combine raster with vector and hybrid line work. It’s literally the easiest part of my process that’s pre set up once in a template.
My projects are all different custom homes.
I agree it’s not too difficult a process, but I dislike the added complexity of the additonal scenes in SU, the managment of layers, styles and LO settings. It’s hard keeping track of all the interrelated parts.
But the real issue is: How does stacking viewports actually help improve layout speed or ease of dimensioning/annotation?
Snapping (e.g. when using the dimension tool) still occurs if you have a viewport rendered in raster mode, and still occurs even if that viewport is on a locked layer.
Why is LayOut trying to snap to hidden/softened edges at all? Maybe that “snap to absolutely everything” could be an option we select if desired. 
Don’t you find the same issue when furniture or other complex components are in the scene?
I just dont see why LO would want to snap dimensions to hidden edges, or snap to faces that are softened.
I’ve uploaded an example to demonstrate.
It’s an old (pre-2020) project so it actually does used 1 stacked viewport for the dashed & thick edges. One file shows the final output, one shows just the vector, and theJPG file shows a view of the SKP model to highlight the hidden complexity.
Complex Driveway - Final.pdf (1.9 MB)
Complex Driveway -Stacked Vector viewport.pdf (155.3 KB)
The “trouble” area in this case is the lane (modelled by engineers). On other scenes or projects it might be a landscape surface or a tree or some furniture.
Most of the time, reducing the complexity of these objects isn’t practical (the plugins that i’ve tried arent quick or reliable and can distort critical info). This type of object complexity is not an issue at all for SKP (because “soften edges” makes it easy to work with) but is a big issue for LO. On this page, hybrid rendering mode is virtually impossible. Adding dimensions is very slow and every time something shifts within SKP the dimensions & annotations get scattered all over the LO page.
So, like many others that have speed issues with Layout, you are primarily using vector renders?
If so, then stacking a combination of raster and vector line work will drastically increase Layout speed. I only vector render the section slice of a model which renders instantly as does a raster render of everything below the section plane.
You have to imagine if you are vector rendering a wall instead of a slice, you are essentially rendering 6 faces and 12 edges, while a slice is rendering one face and 4 edges.
Also while dimensioning you shouldn’t have extraneous elements like furniture on, unless they are being dimensioned for say a restaurant table layout.
Many shy away from raster render as the feel the jagged edges are not acceptable, often forgetting that they are zoomed in on a large screen. The reality is quite different in the high quality export of the pdf and print.
With this process, I don’t see the slow lag in LO…at least in the rendering part.
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I believe he’s referring to my zero thickness section plane trick using color by tag with transparent tag colors Create LIVE Section Cuts in SketchUp with the "Donley Method" - MasterSketchUp.com
(apologies to others - this is now rather off topic re: line style control)
So, like many others that have speed issues with Layout, you are primarily using vector renders?
Nope, I generally use raster (I may switch to hybrid for final output or when I need to dimension onto visible edges (raster is not good for that).
The example I uploaded (PDFs) has the main (complicated) plan in raster mode, with a stacked viewport in vector (very simple/quick to render), so it uses the same process you’re describing.
(In 2020 I might decide to trade the simplicity of Hybrid (LO-defined edge styles) versus the rendering speed of stacking Raster+Vector).
But my key issue remains…whether vector or raster, stacked or not, LayOut tries to snap to every point & face on the model.
Yes sorry about the off topic. If you are dimensioning a raster plan, it should be detecting the next closest point. I dimension my plans in minutes because the main dimensions to grids and overall dims are snapped to grid lines in layout. The only other remaining dims are to interior walls and window/door centerline which for me at least, are very easy to find.
A great fix if at all possible for the SU team would be snap ability to the section cut.
I’m a bit scared of dimensioning a raster rendered model, especially if the section cut faces have some details in them. I cannot, so stacking viewports is key for dimensioning where the section is a different viewport from the view of the model.
I do feel a stacked viewport workflow is painful. For each viewport on the stack a scene in Sketchup must be made. It’s not reasonable if you need several and I know I need too many and the amount is a bit crazy.
However the fact that we need any at all doesn’t help Layout’s case. In a single viewport it should be able to present what we need, this presentation should be managed in Sketchup while we are creating the scene without more overrides or tweaks in Layout, a viewport should allow accurate dimensioning without raster pixelization making us uncomfortable, it should allow multiple tags to export to CAD and it should be fast.
It isn’t so we have to get back to a safe place, where Layout isn’t exactly capable of what we want, but we can manage several workarounds to make it do what we want. The collection of workarounds like stacking, should be completely avoided but it looks it’s becoming official and standard workflow. This is not right. The team should make all efforts to avoid them but this will reveal even more issues as we are too attached to stacking viewports already.
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