Details for scrapbook

[jkbarberjr]

Just starting with drawing construction documents was wondering about details is it easier to draw in SketchUp the details and the send to layout and sav as scrapbook or to draw in layout. If drawing in layout does anyone no a good tutorial?

[Dave R]

It depends on what the details are and how you need to show them in LayOut. It might be easier to model them in SketchUp and create scenes to use for viewports in LayOut. After you've set up the viewports (making sure you do not modify the Camera properties) you could save as a scrapbook so those viewports are available to drag in to your CDs when needed. For 2D symbols and such, it would probably be better to draw those in LayOut as Scaled Drawings than to draw them in SketchUp. Make sure you group the elements of each symbol so they behave as a single object.

I would suggest that you make sure you keep your SketchUp detail model files as lightweight as possible. When you add one of those viewports from the Scrapbook to your CD you are adding the SketchUp file as a reference which can bloat your LayOut file and possibly cause performance issues depending on your hardware. You can see that if you add one of the supplied 3D arrow objects from the Scrapbook.

Another option that may help with file management is to create details in SketchUp and then after rendering the viewports in LayOut as Vector or Hybrid, exploding them so they become LayOut drawing objects instead of SketchUp viewports. This would reduce their overhead in your CDs because they no longer carry the entire SketchUp model.

Different options depending on what you need exactly.

[fakebob]

I'm late to the party on this one, but I've been detailing in SU since version 2 (20 years ago!) and layout since it's first iteration (which was tedious). I've found that I tend to go down a dual route, depending on what level of competence I have in the contractor and/or the complexity of the build.
I Scrapbook most of my standard details which are small SU files in the same folder as the Sketchbooks. This makes a lot of them nicely lightweight in LayOut too, and if there's a change in legislation I change the Scrapbook file accordingly.