Oh, and another one that you likely know but newer users may not: there’s a nice “Sample Style” tool, that if you design like @DaveR suggests and put your labels on their own layer, you can do this in one fell swoop:
Right (PC) / Control (Mac) click on your label layer in the Layers panel and click on “Select Entities”.
Type s to enable Sample Style.
Click on the label with 0% opacity leader lines (that’s not on the labels layer).
Voila / Bob’s your uncle: all your labels are now 0% opacity leader lines.
Ahaha. I think eventually most users will get there too, but will also bang their heads against it, scratch their head, and think there must be another way to do it.
Your steps vary slightly from @Barry. Try making your selection first, then using s to temporarily enable the sample style tool rather than changing to it from the toolbar. That should apply the style to all selected items.
Would you find it useful to have a set of menu items to “Select all <EntityType> on page”? What would your expectation be if some of that entity are at the root level and others are contained within groups? See the behavior of the Select All command when you are at the root level vs when you are editing a group to see why I ask that question.
Maybe a select all dimensions on the dimensions panel. Select all texts and all leaders on the leaders panel, viewports on the model’s panel and so on. I don’t believe we have panels for all entities though.
Maybe something like a select toolbar.
Maybe something like Thomthom’s selection toys plugin.
I understand the question about groups.
In some contexts I’d like to ignore groups, in some contexts I’d definetely like to ignore them.
Another application has implemented this by modifying the ctrl-a function so that the tool you have selected determines the selection filter: with the label tool, it selects all labels, etc.
We have a “select all dimensions” and “update selected dimensions” in SketchUp through model info, which works well for effecting quick global changes. Something similar in Layout would be welcome, especially if it could be applied to other kinds of entities as well.
We are in the weeds a bit here but while we are at it. I wish the sample/paste style dropper covered the leader type (curved) for lables. It will paste the font and colors and other attributes but sampling a label with a curved leader and applying that style to another does not change the leader style. Something to discuss at your next meeting.
We’re definitely in the weeds, and I’ll post something from my discussions with @garzonetto on where we’re at from thread 1. We appreciate the feedback, but don’t be afraid to start your own thread, no matter how small you think the issue is. Just try to be a little gentler in the title: those who help out a lot here grow weary of people who join the forums for one particular “mic drop” post, then leave without investing time & effort to solve their own problem. That wasn’t the case with @garzonetto (even though he joined recently, a long time user), which is why we kept this thread going.
I was away from LayOut for a few years, and I had a bug report ready before I realized that you have to select the objects you want to change before sampling. But trust me, it was written that way by the guy who invented SketchUp, so that’s how he intended it.
Thank you Barry. And that is a really good way of stating it. I’m impressed with how often I see Sketchup Team Members replying and following these threads. A lot of other software forums seem to be just for users—without any interaction from the software company’s team.
Another thing that could be helpful is to have the option of showing each individual object (or at least object groups like in Sketchup’s outliner) listed in the layers panel. Adobe does this with layers in InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop, and all their competitors have it as well.
A style or class menu would also be extremely handy, so that you could tag page elements (Header 1, Header 2, dimension lines major, dimension lines, labels, callouts, notes, etc.) with a style (like CSS or Text/Paragraph Styles in InDesign) and make changes to everything in that style at once. There is an hidden way to enable this functionality to a limited degree on MacOS using the built-in typography tools (Menu Bar> Text> Show Rulers).
Yes, Select right-click context menu, plus Selection Toys and Deep Select are two ways we are used to working with in SketchUp.
Let’s try to keep some consistency between SU and LO…right-click is easiest. Less buttons all over the place.
People who use it often may assign a shortcut key.
Oh and by the way can someone at Trimble ask Thom to change the extension so it says “Select by TAGS” because it still says “Select by Layer”
We have a “select all dimensions” and “update selected dimensions” in SketchUp through model info, which works well for effecting quick global changes. Something similar in Layout would be welcome, especially if it could be applied to other kinds of entities as well.
Agreed.- this is another good (extra) approach to make global changes to text styles, which is a function lacking from LO at present. If you’re making a new menu for this then add in a few options like, Paragraph Text Style, Dimension Style, Leader Style, Bullet Style, Numbering Style, etc… So we can change them at the document/template level.
Hi Paul
I have been trying to switch all my view ports from Raster to Vector but i haven’t successfully converted even one view port to vector it just keeps spinning over and over again and I’m having a jury in a few days time, I dont even know what to do at this point
I think it’s because of the specification of my PC, i’d be glad if i could use your help to help me convert them on your end Thanks
It’d really mean a lot
Agreed, the right-click menu and model info pane would be great places for the selection functionality to maintain consistency.
Normally anything in the right-click menu is also in the menu bar (on a Mac by Apple’s Human-Interface Guidelines) and I think it would be smart to have it in the menu bar too. Interestingly, Sketchup doesn’t seem to match the select functionality in the menu bar with the right-click menu, but it seems like this would be easy enough to remedy, right?
I don’t see a reason to add a dedicated button to the GUI anywhere else, as it would just introduce clutter for a relatively “pro” feature (as in if you need to use it, you probably know to look for it).
Below is a screenshot from Affinity Designer, which has a similarly advanced set of selection options to Sketchup, and it is very capable for a “Layout” program (as affinity Designer is also focused on page layout, albeit for Graphic Design rather than AEC+).
