Why in layout does a blue/gray color surround my viewports

how do I get rid of a color surround of blue gray in my viewports. How do I get a simple black line identifying the limits of the viewports?

Can you show an example of what you are seeing? I don’t get any sort of color surround my viewports in LO.

(Please move to LayOut category.)

I stumbled across the reason for the color outside of the viewport content. I went to the styles and tracked down the straight lines style and applied one of the listed styles and it went away. Too bad they don’t list all of the styles where you can easily find them. Thanks for the response.

From your description of what you did, it sounds like it wasn’t the viewport being surrounded but rather the model. For example in my screenshot below, the viewport is shown by the blue bounding box. From your original description it sounded like your blue/gray color was surrounding the viewport.

So instead it was the blue/gray background color from your selected style that was showing in the viewport around your model. As you found, you can select another style that has a white background color. There are some styles like that in the Default styles collection, too. You could also edit and update the existing style in SketchUp to change the background to white and/or turn off sky and ground if needed.

The styles are shown in the Style collections in SketchUp with thumbnails. It seems pretty straightforward to me. How would you propose that they be made easier to find?

Screenshot - 7_7_2020 , 2_55_14 PM

Here is what I had on all of my viewports and now this one is stuck with the color. My complaint about the styles is that I had to stumble upon the little down arrow next to the listed style type to find out 2 additional style folders in which the one I ended up using was listed.

sk.JPG

Most likely you’ve modified the scene for that viewport which disconnected it from the scene in SketchUp. If you share your LayOut file I will help you get it straightened out.

What version of SketchUp and LayOut are you using? That information is useful in helping you sort out your questions. Please complete your profile.

That same drop down list style is also used in Materials and Components and it works the same way to access the various collections.

I tried to send it but the file is 10 mb and 9 mb is the limit. I will have to try and make it smaller unless there is another way of getting it to you.

You could upload it to Drop Box or Google Drive and share the link.

I have dropbox, forget how to share the link. Help?

If you highlight the file you should see Share on the right. Click it. a window should open and at the bottom you should see Copy Link. Click it. Then make a reply in this thread and paste it.

Here is the dropbox link. Dropbox - sketchup layout - Simplify your life

OK. So the gray you see in that viewport is not the background. It is a section plane. You can see that in the copy I’ve made and enlarged. The style you selected is one that displays section planes.

I went back to your SketchUp model. It still shows the colored background and sky. It also shows that you have numerous exposed back faces which you shouldn’t have but that’s another story.

I edited the style to set the background color to white and turn off the sky. I set the Face Style to Hidden Line so the model is displayed in black and white. I also made sure that section planes are not displayed by the style.

Then I saved the changes to the SketchUp file, went back to LayOut and updated the reference. Finally I reset the viewports so they’d use the style from the model and set rendering to Vector to get nice sharp vector line work. I also turned off Background for the viewports so the white background would mask the page border, especially at the bottom.

Does this look like what you are after?

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That is perfect. I, as you can probably tell, am just starting out in layout, so I do not have a good grasp on things. What you have done for me is an immense help and hopefully I can continue in the right direction. I am an Architect and should have had a better understanding, but layout is a different process than cadd, quite a bit. Thanks again.

I’m glad that helped, Rick.

I think you may already have found that like anything else, there’s ways to sort of cobble things together and there’s the “right” way. Usually the “right” way makes the whole process easier and down the road makes changes easier. Of course you have to learn that right way and it’s probably better to start doing that early on before you develop bad habits.

Dave, Are these changes reflected in the dropbox file? I can’t see them except in your email.

No. I didn’t replace the Drop Box file. i didn’t even save the changes but I’ll open it again and redo them. Will let you know when I’ve finished.

Here you go. I also fixed the incorrect tag use in the SketchUp model along with purging unused stuff. Reduced the file by nearly 25%.

yachats 1R cleaned.layout (6.0 MB)

Thanks

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HI !!! I need help… this is the grey box that I am seeing around my viewpoints. I’ve been using Layout for a while but have never encountered it. How do I rid of it?