I find the references come anyway and are easy to snap without shift, In fact so many references--some of which I don't think I'll ever figure out, some arcane trig relationships I guess.

Yes I agree, but I find it peculiar that I cannot do such a basic thing inside of Layout. I just wanted to make a quick check on paper to see if my document layout made sense before exporting it to PDF. Guess I can't...

Thanks anyway Dave R!

Dave and Brian,

Thanks for the ideas and examples. I'll try them out!

Peter

@pbacot said:

I prefer that the lines are true to paper space, and don't care how they look "zoomed out" This means that where the visible dash occurs in relation to rest of the drawing on screen is exactly where it will be when exported or printed. I often adjust dash lines for clarity.

pbacot,
I apreciate your reply and not because I agree with you. 💚

Unfortunate more haven’t chimed in on this, would have been nice to have more of a consensus.

Charlie

How about this trick ..
The answer is in the 15 second of the gif.

Basic Test

Your option and Peter's fog are good options. A third would involve stacking viewports which are separate by a shape with a transparent color applied. The shape could be a rectangle or other appropriate shape but you wouldn't need to trace the visible lower area and so you wouldn't need to worry about the shape changing if you move objects in the foreground. I would use three layers for this with the background on the lowest layer, the rectangle on the middle layer and the foreground on the top layer.

Sorry about that I did not make that connection. That crash #1673 is related to a re-render of a SketchUp viewport so I will add this information to the issue.

Just to be clear you received this error message with that crash?

I never tried exporting pdf from LO, or don't recall. I'd have to check the results. Consistent automatic naming of the files is helpful to me in the print process I described. One less thing to do (actually several actions), or to go wrong (e.g. when you have to go all the way back to SU file to correct a little thing and then get to your finished output again through LO, especially at deadline). Another thing was the slow print dialog in LO. Each time you choose to print a page it seems to have to re-render it. Just long enough to cause a little blip in your flow.

Hey TIG, thanks for responding so quickly. I've tried your suggestion but I get the same error message unfortunately.

Did you try unticking Preserve drawing origin in the import options?

No I didn't get a message that it was read only, which is the concerning part. It allowed me to open and proceed as if I had the only instance open.

Thanks!! Didn't realise I had auto save turned on in Layout (I've always had it disabled within Sketchup).

Have now turned it off, as I prefer to manually save using a keyboard shortcut at specific points when I'm working.

Excellent! I'm glad it did work. I think you'll find that it's better to do the PDF exports and print them anyway. If you want to do large format prints, you can send the PDF to an office supply store or other firm that has large printers and you can send PDFs to clients directly and know what they should be seeing when they open your file.

Thanks Dave that's a good point. I need to update my templates anyway with the onset of the new EU data protection laws coming in.

@unknownuser said:

Well, I have been using Sketchup since Ver 4, and I do not see this selection, Shape Style.

A little help would be nice.

Thanks in advance, Ken

It's in Layout.
Bep

@dave r said:

I believe there is a known bug related to this and I think the LO team is working on it. Until it gets fixed I would suggest using TIG's Section Cut Face instead of the Section Fill.
[attachment=0:gsx0983f]<!-- ia0 -->Screenshot - 4_19_2018 , 10_27_54 AM.png<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:gsx0983f]

Thanks for having a look at this Dave.

I have historically used TIG’s section cut face (& still do w/more complex cuts)......but with the SU 2018 new section fill and this being a “simple” drawing I used that feature instead.

Didn’t even occur to me to check that for being the cause........anyhow.......now I am aware......so thanks again for that.

Charlie

For normal fonts fractions will be displayed horizontally as below.
Screenshot - 4_14_2018 , 6_32_30 PM.png

I expect you could find or make a font that included a variety of glyphs for fractions such that the numbers are stacked vertically or diagonally but there isn't any facility currently for doing that directly in LayOut.

My Logitech Mx Revolution settings that have helped me some with the slow zoom in LO.

LO_Logitech_mouse_settings.PNG

Hello All

I re-visited this thread recently and would like to share what I have been doing in relation to hatches in Layout. This is very much experimentation but it may be of use to someone.

Start in Photoshop with a new file. After a few tries with different size layers in Photoshop I went with a 1400px by 1400px transparent base layer and drew lines to form the hatching using the Path tools. These I believe are vector elements. I had an idea that if, instead of drawing the hatch lines themselves, I could fill the negative spaces with wide lines and leave the hatch lines as transparent spaces. The image is saved as a PNG. I formed just two (hatch) lines in the image as this was near the maximum that the Path line tool can cover (1000px max width of Path line). I'm no expert in Photoshop (or SU/Layout for that matter) so my explanation is probably lacking in detail. However, it does seem to me that the Path tools give a better/crisper line result even when zoomed.

In Layout, the PNG can be loaded into the Pattern inspector tab. A solid fill is enabled in the Shape inspector and this is masked by the PNG. The colour of the shape fill is, therefore, visible through the transparency of the PNG. Thus the hatch can be any colour. The limitation with this method is the hatch lineweight is fixed by the PNG image although when zoomed the line does thicken.

Attached is a version 2015 Layout file with three hatch pattern PNGs plus a PDF of the same. These are used at different scale factors and fill colours.

Have a look and see what you think!

PS Did anyone catch the Sketchup April Fool on Youtube? Worth a look!

Hatch tests 02.layout

Hatch tests 02.pdf

There's a lot more to that window than just setting the units and whether or not the units are displayed. You should check out the other buttons.