in LO 26 we got separate move, rotate, and scale tools, and a promise that drawing in Layout would be much more like in SU.
That was great. But why not even more like in SU?
So there´s no stretch tool in sketchup. But you can select different lines within a group, and move those lines.
I feel this is a basic geometrical transformation that Layout should also provide.
You can move selected lines if you double-click into a geometry in Layout too. But that “group” is made for you automatically, and it cannot contain geometry that is not connected. You cannot have a autogroup, or bounding box, of two rectangles like above , choose one line from each rectangle and move those two lines. So there´s no stretch function.
Those two rectangles would be separate “groups” made automatically. You can choose the two, but you cannot choose individual lines of two different “groups”.
Solution 1:
Layout can just not autogroup new geometry into a bounding box. I dont understand what that box accomplishes. Then you could select geometry the same way as in SU, and you would group the geometry you wanted to group in the same way as in SU.
Solution 2:
Allow all the drawing tools to be used within the bounding box, like deleting separate lines, drawing within that box, move, rotate, and so on. As it is now, if you double-click into a bounding box, and then select “Line”, you then auto-close the bounding box.
I’m all for progress and I have embraced the new trim, extend and fillet tools but any new functionality must be developed for what is best for Layout and not automatically to emulate SketchUp.
As I understand it – I think – LayOut is path-based vector whereas SketchUp is a surface modeller. In LayOut, a shape is a single ‘Path’ entity with its own coordinate set, which is why it exists in its own ‘bounding box’ rather than as a collection of loose, ‘sticky’ edges.
Having said that, I can see that some form of what you describe could be useful functionality.
yes, I understand Layout lines sort of like the old “polylines”.., and as such they can have their fills defined by what is “inside” their paths, like how illustrator works. I remember when illustrator put a bounding box around their polyline objects. After that you could not “stretch” in illustrator anymore, for the same reason as you cannot do that in Layout now. So that was a step backwards, in terms of editing geometry.
Being polylines keep them being separate objects, that can be selected as one entity.
You could then use the same logic as in sketchup, kind of: Selecting with a selection window from right to left will select the whole path of all “polylines” within the selection window. Selecting the opposite direction will only select affected parts of each poly line, and then you can move those lines, even though they are parts of separate polylines.
This is standard old cad way of doing things, and even though I am not a big fan of the old cad ways, I feel that this stretch functionality could be carried over and benefit Layout.