Make layout tools work the same as sketch-up tools!

Jasonrlord

First let me say my appreciation to the sketch-up team for building such a great set of tools!

Give me both a move and select tool in layout! When I want to select a line at is over an image I always end up moving the image and don't select the line, I know I can lock the image, but seriously just give me both a select and move tool! Then make this move tool work just like it does in sketch-up, allow me to easily lock red, green inferences and copy arrays! This would be huge!
Allow me to make groups and components in layout -- or at least within the existing group function allow me to select different tools with out exiting the group!
The ability to make a gradient, image or texture fill for shapes in LO would be much much appreciated.
Export to dwg/dxf.
A 2D warehouse
A progress bar & stop button for when I stupidly decide to vector draw a huge sketch-up model that takes 10minutes

Thanks sketch-up team!

bjanzen

Thanks. We have this on our feature request list (move), and selecting should work like SketchUp with lower right to upper left selecting anything included in bounding box, and upper right to lower left selecting only things completely in bounding box. If that's not working, it's a bug. You should be able to zoom in and click on the line to select, then move, and type a paper space move distance in the VCB, er, measurements box. I often select sloppily then shift click on the things I don't want in my selection.
You can group things - command/alt - shift - g or Edit->Group should do it. Then double click to edit the items within the group. These can be nested as well (group in a group in a group etc...).

3 - 5 Feature request we get. We'll +1 to the requests.

LOL - me, too. I usually wait to get coffee or go to the bathroom at times like that.

Thanks for the feedback.

b

Jasonrlord

bjanzen,

Thanks for the reply, feedback like that is why sketch-up, the @last/google team rocks.

I think I am missing something with the groups, I double click on a group to edit (say add a line) but then when I click the line tool it escapes from within the group and draws the line outside the group??

Having copy/array with the move tool would be huge.

I appreciate the desire to keep layout simple, but sometimes I feel that while I can fly in sketch-up, selecting and moving in layout feels like trying to run while wrapped in duct-tape. Sometimes I think I have selected only what I wanted, but then when I zoom out I find I have moved unexpectedly selected things. Having a select and a move tool would improve workflow and prevent me from having to zoom in/out so much. Also while we are on zooming, can we have a larger range then 25% to 1000%, sometimes 1000% is not quite enough to select fine lines that are right next to each other and to step-back and look at the whole composition I want to zoom out further then 25%.

I can't wait for the next release, Layout just keeps getting better and better. The day 7.1 came out was a good, good day.

bjanzen

Nope, you're not missing anything - it's how it's implemented for now (that's my wimpy way of saying it's technically not a bug). In SketchUp if you double click the group then select a drawing tool, it will add that geometry to the group. LayOut doesn't do that. For now, you'll have to ungroup, draw, regroup. As drawing in LayOut gets more sophisticated, I'm sure we'll look into implementing more of the SketchUp way in the future.

b

tim

Progress bar and stop/cancel button (that actually works) should be standard on every bit of software; but it's as rare as unicorn teeth.

Basically every action should be wrapped in a progress bar type widget . The widget should have a timer setting so that it doesn't actually appear until ~ 0.3sec after the action starts, so that quick actions are.... invisible? quiet? whatever. For actions that will take an unknown or indeterminable time, the progress bar can do something like a random speckle patten - anything that says the system is still alive and working. The (very ancient) PERT workstations that ICL built in the early 80s used a similar idea . Acorn's almost as ancient RISC OS UI had an OS call (making it trivial for any app to be well behaved) to do the timed-busy-indicator. Any app that has an undo system should be able to cancel at any point.

What, me ranting about UI design again? Horrors.

baz

Bjanzen
I agree with all the above, I love layout but purely for its reference to the SU model.
I find the GUI very clunky and frankly tedious. Selecting and moving is my main complaint, but the rest is pretty ordinary too.
I might be spoilt, I've been using Macromedia Fireworks for years and its a very elegant interface and not at all hard to get the hang of.
It would be great if you could have a look at it and you'd see what I mean. It's what I always used to use for presentations before Layout and it's not dissimiliar to Layout in its GUI.
Baz

baz

i wonder what happened to this thread, was it me?
baz

edit: must have been

bmike

+1 to the OP.
Want the LayOut tools to work just like the SketchUp tools.
Going back and forth should be as seamless as possible.

I'm always catching myself when I jump into LayOut, having to remember how to move, rotate, select, etc.

Components would be great, just like in SketchUp (again), to have both Groups and Components.
Many times a note will live in multiple pages... and yes, I can see the danger of having true components - but I've so often wanted to be able to change multiple notes with the same text on several pages...

Global model control to Vector / Raster.
OR maybe some sort of 'work' mode. Almost like styles in SketchUp (I have work styles and scenes and 'presentation' sets...). Would be so much faster to toggle all viewports onto 'work' or 'presentation' globally. And make editing so much smoother.

pbacot

Since we're wishing, I want better cropping of images in LO. Now I almost always want to resize and crop an image when I bring it in. There is no real cropping right? There's some clunky manipulation you can do, then... you just have to do a clipping mask.

The way the mask works and the fact it preserves well on update is cool, but I'd like a regular crop process too.

Thanks,

Peter

fouronethirty

yes yes yes, please make l.o work just like the skp.