I’m doing a site plan for an event. Within the layout there’s ‘booths’ or spaces for sponsors. Typically I’d label all the booths in Layout, but because it’s a huge site, I can’t do that (when I move around in Layout, I then have to separately scale and move the labels… which is a pain).
Anyway… The line quality is great in Sketchup, but when I want to output a PDF, it’s so low res that the booth numbers can’t be read… I’ve tried changing things, and most forums seem to suggest using Hybrid render… but it takes so long and just hangs after some time.
Anyone know the best option? So far, the nearest I’ve got it to export the model from Layout to DWG/DXF… AutoCAD then seems to handle the lineweight much better… but it’s not as presentable…
Urgh… anyway, happy to answer questions as I’m probably not being very clear haha.
What version of SketchUp/LayOut are you using? Your profile says you are using "SketchUp Free (web) 2019. There is no such thing and SketchUp Free (web) doesn’t provide access to LayOut.
What does this mean? What are you moving around in LayOut?
Hybrid rendering will render linework and any text coming from SketchUp as Vector, not Raster. Raster rendering, especially for text will yield less sharp content in a PDF or other export. Hybrid rendering will take longer. If you don’t need to show textures you could use Vector rendering instead. Or it might make sense to use stacked viewports with the bottom one left in Raster for textures and the top one in Hidden Line and Vector rendering.
You can also look at export quality. Setting Output quality to High will generally yield better raster output although it will also increase the size of the PDF file.
It very well may be that your SketchUp models could use some optimizing and you could change your workflow in LayOut so labels and other text don’t need to be fixed. Hard to exactly with no more information than you’ve given us to work with. Seeing a typical LO file from you would help.
Hi, I never set anything on my profile… I just signed up… So I’m not sure why it has that version… I’m using Sketchup 2024 (I’ll update my profile!).
Move around… I meant like when you double click the viewport to adjust the view in the layout… It goes high res, then when you leave the viewport edit mode (?) it goes back to crappy.
Unfortunately, as a new user I’m only allowed to embed 1 image… So here’s the export to PDF to show you what I mean. All output settings are on high…
Really there should be no need to be double clicking into viewports. That can cause all sorts of trouble for you as you preceed with the LO document. Still When it goes back to “crappy”, LayOut is using the display quality setting from Document Setup>Rendering. You can set it to High if you want.
How large are these objects on the page in the PDF in your screenshot.
So… is it normal for LO to take an impossible amount of time to render into Vector? I don’t have a slow computer by any means, but I end up having to kill LO as it takes too long.
However, I’m happy to share the file and you can see… might be easier than me posting screen shots haha.
As mentioned, my LO settings are already on high, so I don’t think it’s that? Also, to reiterate, the reason I’m not using text in LO is because they often want the whole site (readable) and then each area for individual details. I can’t see a way to do this without having to label every single Page created in LO… which takes forever to do manually…
I don’t really follow the “don’t double click in LO” comment, sorry? Why does it have that function that if it’s not recommended? But also, if you want to show different views of one drawing, it seems like you’re suggesting I have to do the view in SU, then update the reference in LO every time? Sorry if I’m not understanding that, but I’m just doing it how I’d use viewports in ACAD… Is there a YouTube tutorial on that best practice you can share?
Here’s my file anyway… And I’m well prepared that as an ACAD user coming to SU I’m maybe doing things wrong! :S
Your model covers a huge area because you dragged the scale figure out nearly 6 km from the origin. That gives LayOut an excessively large area to consider for rendering.
I deleted the scale figure component and purged unused stuff from the model.
I also see you hid the aerial image instead of turning off its tag. If you no longer need the image, turn off its tag instead of hiding it. That image file is much higher resolution than SketchUp and LayOut can use so if you want to keep it, you should reduce its size to something that doesn’t overload things. You can get Material Resizer from the Extension Warehouse to use for that.
There are over 2.2 Million edges for LayOut to parse through for rendering. Every edge will take time to render. You could reduce that a lot by not using 3D text for all the labels.
I see incorrect tag usage.Untagged should be left active at all times and all edges and faces should be created and remain untagged. Only groups and components should be given tags. An exception to that could be when you are creating all those 3D text entities but in that case it’s the text components being given the tags. Just remember to set Untagged as active before you do anything else. Of course if you were doing the labeling in LayOut, you would add those labels on a layer over the layer the viewport is on.
There’s quite a lot of ungrouped geometry in your model. I’m guessing some of it probably isn’t needed and could be reduced to simplify the model.
After unhiding the aerial image and turning off its tag. I used Zoom Extents to fill the model space with the model and I created a scene. You should be creating scenes to use for the viewports in LayOut. Not doing so makes it likely your LO file will get screwed up and create a ton of work for you later.
(I know there are some edges not shown as dashed. That is due the edges being ungrouped and fixing the incorrect tag usage.
After saving the file I sent it to LayOut. I don’t know what scale you are using. I set it to 1:200 on A0 paper and dragged the edges of the viewport to fit within the sheet’s borders.
I set the render mode to Vector and walked 10 feet to the kitchen to refill my coffee cup from the pot and walked back. When I got back the viewport was rendered as vector. So not instant butnot an “impossible amoount of time”
At a scale of 1:200 most of the 3D text elements are not very big.
If you made each of those plots or whatever they are groups with names or better, components with names and descriptions, adding the labels in LayOut would be faster than using 3D text in the SketchUp model because the labels can fill automatically with the information you’ve give n the objects. And you wouldn’t have to wait for the text to be rendered with the viewport when you switch to Vector.
First, by not creating scenes in your SketchUp model to use for the viewports in LayOut, you end up using the Last saved SketchUp view as the “scene”. So if you go back to the model to make any edits and move the camera, you run the risk of the viewport getting changed dramatically and screwing up a lot of work. You should be creating scenes in the SketchUp model to give you fixed positions for the camera.
The double clicking into the viewport to zoom, pan, and orbit is great for perspective views and for one-off documents but modifying the camera position in the viewport can lead to big problems that will take longer to fix than if you use a good, solid workflow in the first place. Here I’ve set the scale of the viewport to 1:20 and double clicked into it to pan the camera. Note the dark gray background Camera section and Reset buttons in the SketchUp Model panel. I then added some dimensions and labels attached to the viewport.
Then I reset the Camera and this is the result. This zoomed as far out as possible. The dimensions are nowhere to be seen. The label leaders are still attached to that part of the model but are pretty useless.
Instead of double clicking into the viewport to shift the camera, the edges of the viewport can be dragged to crop the view as needed. Since the Camera position is still exactly as it is in the SketchUp model, there’s no override in LayOut so no Reset button. No risk of the viewport changing unexpectedly or accidentally. Here you can see essentially the same view as in the modified one above with the dimensions and labels back where they were and the Camera is unmodified.
No. You need to create scenes for different views/camera positions but in cases like this plan view you can use the same camera position and just crop the viewports to show what you need. In my example with your model, I only created one plan view scene in your model. The viewport I showed at 1:200 is on the first sheet. The one at 1:20 is a copy of the viewport on the second sheet in the LO file.
Here is an example from one of my projects. I realize its not on the same scale but it shows the same sort of workflow I’m describing. I’ve turned off layers for dimensions and some of the text. All of these viewports come from just five scenes. For most of them I just cropped the viewport to show the part of the model I wanted. Not one of the viewports has had the Camera moved. (And most of the labels are auto filled based on the component they are anchored to.
Yeah. This isn’t ACAD and there are things that are done differently.
You’ll make your work easier if you don’t try to make SketchUp and LayOut work like AutoCAD. You can drive a lag screw with a hammer but it’s a heckuva lot easier if you drill a hole and drive it with a wrench the way it was intended to be driven. I would suggest that you start with the tutorials at learn.sketchup.com
