are there any example videos out there?
It doesnât take a video. To open LayOut from SketchUp go to the File menu and click on Send to LayOut.
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yeah and what I get is a 1st floor plan laying in the lower corner of a page. and why isnât a D sized page an option? would that have been so tough Trimble?
Share you LayOut file so we can see what youâve set up.
There are Arch D sized templates but you can (and should) create your own template with the desired paper size along with title block and other stuff that is common to your documents.
None of it is tough and you are in control f what your document looks like. Maybe you should go through the tutorials at learn.sketchup.com
None, that is No, as zero, D sized templates were listed in the options when it opened. The largest listed was Tabloid. And nowhere did it show âcreate your ownâ.
Really? There are a number of Arch D templates available.
Thereâs no reason you canât change the paper size for one of the other templates. Thatâs done in Document Setup>Paper⌠Make the paper whatever size you want. Either choose from the list or set a custom paper size if you want.
The shipped templates are intended as a starting point for your projects. They arenât intended to be the only templates you can use.
Itâs the same thing as in SketchUp. Start a LayOut document and make whatever changes you want for your own template. Then use File>Save as template to save it for later use. The template will include your text choices (font, dimension style, label leader style, etc.) as well as page borders, title block content, layers, number of sheets, etc.
Again, share your LayOut file so we can see what youâve got. Itâll make it possible to help you with the way your model shows up when you send it to LayOut.
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Hereâs a screenshot of one of my templates. I have maybe a dozen of my own templates. This is for Arch E paper. The text properties are set, there are layers for different types of entities, and some of the text in the title block is auto text so that content fills from Document Setup>AutoText.
deleted long angry rant about people blaming the software before they even have a basic understanding of how it works and what it can do
Dave you are a saint, zen master, and a very patient human. Hats off to you for answering these types of questions day in and day out.
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I asked if there were any instructive videos and what I got was âjust open it from inside sketchupâ. Duh I tried that and it kept giving me an error about being signed in even though I was already signed in. I even restarted my computer. Then I get âlearn.sketchup.comâ and I had been there only to find a garage video from 2015. Not a very instructional video at that and that instuctor never went down the templates path that swammie showedâŚ
if you have angry rants that need to be deleted I suggest you just stay away from any post because nowhere in any of my posts did you see anything that should have triggered you. My advice to you is donât read my posts if you are that close to the edge
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Nowhere in your original post did you say that you had already tried that and had problems. If youâd included that information from the beginning I would have gone down a different route with my first reply.
What âgarage videoâ? When I go to learn.sketchup.com and log in I see this:
Sorry I tried to help. Iâll quit now.
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your help was appreciated but the snarkie comment of bmike was not.
^^ This is what I was referring to. Not your first post where you were vaguely asking for help.
There is a D sized option, Iâve been using large sheets since before Trimble acquired the software. And with a bit of homework you would know that you can make a sheet any size you want. Iâve used it for business cards as well as D sized Arch sheets and lots of things in between.
Good luck with your project. Iâll go outside and yell at clouds now.
the âsend it to Layoutâ was the first source of my frustrations. I just signed out of sketchup and signed back in because that seemed to work one time. Then I get this message again this morning. If anyone should scream at the clouds it should be me. All of this should work much more seamlessly.
I just signed out, shut down, signed back in got the same error message so I signed out from the sketchup page and signed back in and now it sends the file again. And, while Iâm at it this is the page that comes up first time. âTitleblockâ is not some place I would intuitively go to find page size, that would be under âPaperâ. I expect software to not only not crash, do weird stuff, but also be intuitive. Iâve had CAD training just never used it while I was working because I always had engineers to do it for me and my time was better spent engagng in more strategic activities than nuts and bolts. Advanced degrees in separate engineering fields, a PE license but never had to use it. Now
Iâm retired and designing a home to build a home where I want to live. Iâve gotten this far and all I want now are construction documents which seems to be the most difficult part. I donât need trees, rendering from inside, I just want D sized prints to get the house built.
This should be the easy part. Once in and I do manage to get a âsceneâ sent over it fills about half of the D size. Moreover when I zone to get a âstickyâ snap to for dimensions it loses granularity so dimensioning just never seemed like an option inside Layout so I dimensioned in Sketchup and a lot of dimensioning leadsers, arrows watever, get lost.
Paper is for blank paper. Titleblock is for paper with a Title Block preplaced (Cartouche, in french)
The templates are location related, on a french layout, I only get A4-A3 templates, BUT Iâm free to change the paper to pretty much any size that was ever made in the document setup panel, at any time. like any other layout software.
At this point layout could simply offer one single default paper size, it would be fine. Open it, and go change the size.
If your SU donât offer D pages standard, open any type of page, and just resize it to D as Dave explained (picture above).
If you want to use one of the offered D papers but you donât like the default block they put on it, then just delete it. just like the figure in a default sketchup file.
Or, again, like dave said, create your own templates, just like in sketchup.
Layout it actually very easy to use. If you donât know how to use it, check this course Dave advised :
There is a whole chapter covering the exact thing you need. changing scale, placing correctly in the paper, parameters, this sort of stuff.
As of the granularity, itâs a display thing. other layout softwares like InDesign do exactly the same, they donât import the whole file, just a low res preview. if you need it to be high res, you can change it the document setup, or switche your sketchup view to vector. How? well again, itâs explained in the course 
Iâve got a German Master of Science in Architecture, a French Bachelorâs degree in architecture and a Spanish University Diploma in Architecture.
Yet when I need to use a software, I start by tutorials and classes. Just this week I took a 5 day refresher course on Archicad. Meanwhile Iâve bought Qcad a couple years ago and due to a lack of training on my part, I still donât know how to use it.
Sketchup and Layout are intuitive. But like any other software, you canât just open them and expect to be able to do everything just by intuition. I first opened Layout after years on Sketchup and InDesign and it was easy, yet I felt the need to watch a 20 min âbroad strokesâ video at the time, to make sure I understood how it worked.
And like you said yourself, your CAD training days are long gone and you never capitalized on them, so you need to take the time to learn. Take the online course, itâs not long, and it will solve many questions you have.
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Have you watched all of these? They are free:
Tools just donât give a â â â â how many degrees you have or how things âshould workâ. Yes, you can pull nails with a claw hammer, but if I have a thousand of them to pull Iâm going for a catâs paw or a larger crow bar depending on the task at hand (are we saving antique trim, or are we taking apart an old barn?). The hammer doesnât care that âIâm smart!â - it will do whatever I try to make it do.
Take a pause, watch the videos and start working smartly instead of trying to brute force it.
And then come back with more questions - and be sure to adjust your attitude before you do. Most everyone here is super helpful, and have long passed the point in their learning where they needed to dimension things or setup paper sizes or templates. When you do get stuck share the files, share a video or screen shot, and explain whatâs happening instead of âItâs not working the way I think it shouldâŚâ
I think I explained what wsa happening pretty well. Starting with the repeating error about signing in when I sign out and in and eventually it sticks. Good software doesnât do that.
actually the CAD skills came back fairly quickly as you can see from my whole house model. A single story with walkout basement. The short tutorials for Sketchup on youtube proved very helpful. All of it came not without learning to be careful in selecting points to draw from or to because Sketchup doesnât automatically join segmented lines and if you donât take care to zoom in to pick your spot you can wind up starting over, which I had to do or you wonât get surfaces to âcloseâ.
BTW, and honestly not to belabor it, but the simple way to scale was to double click the group, right click, and select scale. This wasnât shown in Layout Essentials maybe because it was Mac/Apple.
layout works the same in PC and mac.
double clicking on a SU model in LO will open the free camera movement mode.
A single click on the model is enough, then right click will give you possibility to scale. Or in the âsektchup modelâ panel on your right (this method is generally the one shown in tutoriels)
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