For the life of me I can’t figure out why my text/label tool isn’t working correctly. It maintains its position relative to the camera instead of the model. When I move throughout the model the text just follows me on the screen. Also, it will not let me create an arrow or leader. When I select the text tool and go select a position in the model to place the arrow head it immediately drops the text it doesn’t let me select the leader point and then select the text insertion point. I’ve attached 2 screenshots to try to portray the issue. Any help is appreciated. If you need any additional info let me know.
Thanks,
Tim
Sketchup Issue.pdf (210.2 KB)
To get a leader you need to click some entity in the model. Without a leader, it is screen text and is supposed to do what you are seeing.
You would have more control over the appearance of labels and other text if you put them in with LayOut.
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@DaveR is absolutely correct. Notice the different results depending on where I click in the animation below.
The text tool in SketchUp is a sort of poor man’s annotation tool with very limited capabilities compared to what LayOut provides and with some “features” that can make it awkward to use. Leader text stays attached to whatever you clicked to start, and will move along with it. But it does not resize with zoom, hence can become quite cluttered. As you orbit the model, leader text may be obscured by entities that come to be in front of it and may suddenly flip from right to left. Screen text (leaderless) is anchored to screen coordinates, not to the model. Any changes to the view camera will alter the screen text’s relation to the model contents. There is also a known bug that will cause leader text to zoom off to infinity if you edit the entity it is attached to in certain ways.
Given all these idiosyncrasies, the best advice is to wait to add annotation until you have completed modeling and created a scene that you will not alter later (the same advice applies to dimensions, another kind of annotation). And if you follow that advice, as @DaveR also noted, it is only a bit more effort and far more powerful to do the annotation in LayOut.
Of course, if you are using Make or Free you don’t have LayOut.
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