I insert them in Sketchup, as proxies for rendering. I have to do that for the actual study of the landscaping and for rendering, so why would I repeat work and make it worse?
As I might have told before, we try to work the least we can from Layout.
Sketchup is where we think, Layout is for dimensioning and exporting PDF with titleblocks. We could do it in Sketchup too, actually, If we could stack several scenes together. (@Cyentruk Now we can with 5D+ actually, but I’ve not started exploring that option yet. But imagine avoiding Layout altogether… ahaha!
At the moment I even gave up exporting DWG from it. I use Curic’s toCAD and have standard export for people working with us with everything there except, texts (which become exploded lines in their own layer), dimensions and titleblocks. Stakeholders don’t need those anyway.
All 2D symbols can be simplified 3D symbols instead and even (like cars below) symbols that you only need in plan view, can be placed in Sketchup, as components, fast enough, with the added benefit that you can use them to really verify if your design is following code, (like the wheelchair accessibility symbols below):
For sure, as much in SKP, including any number of scenes I need, but I’m adding maybe a handful of 2d trees and stuff per project (if any at all) - nowhere near as involved as yours.
When I render I do a complete separate model as most of my clients need production drawings + architectural + pretty pictures.
I think I would highlight some of the often overlooked things on the viewport right-click menu. Specifically “Open with SketchUp”, Scenes, and Scale.
“Open with SketchUp” allows you to create the SU live-link. So you don’t have to manually update LO every time you save your SU file.
And you can quickly set scene and scale - it is a lot faster than using the SketchUp Model tray drop-down menus. Since you have to click on the viewport to set scene/scale anyway, might as well be a right-click.
I’d say something I ‘learned too late’ was the use of custom templates. I have one set up with custom margins and guides, AutoText (page titles, project, page numbers, etc), typical sheets/pages (plan, elevations, perspective, etc), placeholder model (for re-linking or pasting my model into to preserve viewports), common text styles, annotations (these could be in scrapbook too but nice to just have off to the side of a ‘blank’ page for quick access), and layers with names. I could expand on this by creating cropped or clipped viewports (just need to re-link underlying reference) or create a default cover page. So many possibilities and the time savings this creates allows more thought to go into specific elements like diagrams, imagery or annotations.
Ha, I hope the hint gets listened to. I am a Numbers user and so much so that I still keep all my tables in Numbers and export my tables in excel format so I can import them into Layout. It’s an annoying extra step to export from numbers every time before updating the table in Layout so I would love to see .numbers support!
Hi there, my tip on getting more out of LayOut is to use the Auto-text followed by the having text “Move to Layer” option to allow for easy auto fill information in at different pages. I organized my sketchUp scenes with symbols such as Color shrubs, black and white shrubs and irrigation. Based on the LayOut tab, one sheet will have colored symbols, the next black and white symbols and the irrigation tab only irrigation symbols.
Hello Aaron, I’ve watched many of your videos over the last few years, sincere thanks for your efforts.
The short answer is that I don’t use Layout, because I only prepare my printed copies of Sketchup work for my own woodworking use. I print these out using the Windows Snipping Tool, and of course, these can be further edited using other Windows apps. I did use Layout for a finished plans on a couple of earlier projects, but, found the extra work unnecessary.
The long (and completely unrelated) answer relates to Sketchup in general… the most helpful thing that all should know is inferencing. I used your videos, and those of Tyson K. and Donquixote Rosinante, working through them diligently until I could recreate their practice drawings myself… this provided an immediate and huge increase in my Sketchup skills, reducing frustration and giving me the confidence I needed.
Thanks again for all your videos, most of which I have seen, especially in my earlier Sketchup days. I know you put great effort into the making of these, and you got me off
“ground zero”.
Everyone has their own favorite way of doing things… But maybe you should give scrapbooks another chance. Especially since you work in a team. Scrabook is basically the same as a template, buti it lives in your side toolbar.
If you have file open to copy paste stuff from it then no one else can modify it. Scrapbooks on the other hand are read only…
The only thing you have streamlined more than us is the materials map.
We have it as a sketchup scene, based on the materials we use in the model.
All the rest as dimensions, texts, labels, lines, are sitting on the page, next the drawing area, but mostly I don’t need them as I’ve got them stored in each tray as default.
LO users often underestimate the value of toolbars and shortcuts. Although it takes some time to set them up, it can significantly save time during work.
Save the same shortcuts as in SU, it helps to remember them (e.g., Hide rest of document).
I would love to see importing Numbers in native format as a future feature. In the past we had to export to .xls and import that way which is not clean and lots of style clean up so we don’t do that any longer.
@bmike Templates live on your local drive by default but you can also add another template folder without having to swap directories. On a Mac, go to LayOut → Settings → Folders … select the + on the top box Templates and add your preferred directory. Note your default directory templates are still there so you’re supplementing, not changing. A nice feature IMO. I have a template folder on Dropbox that is accessible across computers (desktop, laptop). Give it a try.
Would love to see a workflow for that @endlessfix. I have so many other tasks higher on the list, getting a Numbers-based workflow for managing my Layout template tables has been consistently put off.
Thanks all! The intent of this post was to get some ideas from you all so we can up-level our LayOut content… and I, personally, can learn from all of you and get better in my LayOut usage!
My apologies to those who posted requests for changes or issues, I am not the one to help with those comments… you may want to head over to the Feature Request area of the forum.
Thanks again for all the great ideas and inspiration!
I use it all the time to adjust my text styles, dimensions, lines… it’s so cool.