We’ve had this second dashline (under “Default”) since forever, and yet when I set my Tag’s line type to it, I never see any visible change. It seems to be just another “regular” line style.
Its thickness makes one presume it could be a bolder default line, but sadly no.
Can someone clear up the confusion please?
In SketchUp you won’t see any differences but in LayOut you can leverage that “dash style” to control line weight by tag. Here is a screenshot from a project I already had open. I’ve given the screws the solid line dash style and then set the Line Scale to 0.4 pt.. The overall viewport is set to 2 pt so the lineweight is actually 0.8 pt. The screws at 2 pt would be too thick and black.
FWIW, I don’t assign dash styles to tags in SketchUp. I do that per viewport in LO because there’s more control over the appearance of the lines and I can choose a different style for the same tag in different viewports.
Understood, thank you. Didn’t know this because I switched from LayOut to Adobe Illustrator a long time ago, to have the necessary control over my text and graphics.
Will play with LayOut in the weekend to see if it’s become any better. Thank you!
You’re welcome.
Do you do all your dimensioning in SketchUp then? What happens when you have edits to the model? What necessary controls? Just curious because maybe they exist in LayOut.
Not exactly; I do most of my annotations, texts and dimensioning in Illustrator.
Illustrator gives you a much more precise control over size, alignment and proportional relationships of graphics and text.
All my texts are measured by Cap height, instead of the default Em Box, which is the default way of measuring typefaces and font sizes in all other programs. In fact, I believe Illustrator is the only software out there that allows you to specifically change the Font Height Reference.
You also have control over Leading, Tracking and Kerning. My C-Height is 1/2 of Leading (sometimes 1/3 or 1/4 if necessary).
I prefer to measure font heights by Cap/X height, because it enables you to keep track of precise phyiscal size on the artboard. Just an old habit passed down to me by my teachers and professors from uni:
Makes everything look tidy and clean. I’ve created some graphic assets/templates, to not rebuild the same thing for each new project.
Illustrator does have its own dimensioning tools, but I never use them as they lack the aforementioned precision controls
Then of course there’s the Pathfinder, which is surprisingly needed quite often, Gradient and Transparency with granular controls such as blending modes.
Illustrator also has rulers around the frame, which also serves as guideline creation source. It has the Transform panel, which allows precise placement and alignment of elemnts on the artboard, swatches, bezier curve tools, appearance panel with different effects etc.
Just the tip of the iceberg. Of course Illustrator lacks LayOut’s scaled drawing feature which is a huge miss and you can’t directly import SKPs. But I’m not complaining so far.
What if there were an alternative way to create dimensions and annotations directly in SketchUp instead of LayOut? The height of text is measured by cap height. What do you think?
