I tried that just now and I must have done something... I hit a few options so I can't know for sure what did it... But I lost all ability to print. I have like 4 different printers and it would not print to anything. kept saying I needed to add a printer. finally I just did a system restore back to this morning and fixed it. Now I'm gun shy.

I'm going to go back now and do as you say and only as you say and then test.

Any time.

Andy, I'm glad that helped.

As to the color and 3D stuff, have you seen what Nick Sonder is doing? I'm no expert but I think he, and you, have an edge by using color and perspective 3D. It may take some folks a little while to get used to it but the additional information you can give that way is a huge benefit.

Ain't it amazing what hides right under your nose? 😉 😆

TIG -- You, sir, are a genius! It worked just as you said it would. Many, many thanks!

@yojimbo1 said:

Screen shot of Layers in my current LO project. I have watched a tutorial on "pages and layers" in Layout several times but this Layers page still is a complete mystery to me. I understand the concept of "layering", however I feel like this thing has a mind of its own. I am missing a crucial piece of understanding in this puzzle.

Not sure how one layer gets attached to a page, or unattached.

The right column that has the icon of a single or multiple pages: You click it to toggle between the two. In that screen shot, you have two layers "unique elements" and "on every page" set to be on every page. Any entity that is drawn or copied to those layers will appear on every page in the file.

You can actually set every layer to be on every page if you like. Then you control each page by visibility only. I do this to certain layers if I want to quickly reference something from another page. An example would be site plans. I set a contour lines layer to be on every page, but I don't necessarily want to print contour lines on every page. In that case, I just use the eyeball to control each page.

Hi Nick,

You mean like this? I will make sure that this is the case in the future.

auto.JPG

good tip. 👍

on my latest project I did something different from my normal method. All geometry below ground (incl. floor thickness's etc.) were in separate blocks/components and put on separate layers, e.g. "rising walls" as opposed to just "walls" above ground. took a little bit to set up initially, but it's a relatively small project.

Thank you very much, for your answer, Aerilius.

😉
too much work to do for the Trimble team ¡

Thanks Dave for the answer, so simple.
More thanks to Edson for asking the question !

Text bounding box margins on the mac are usually bigger than on windows. This is an issue esp. with small text, dimensions, etc., since this margin is fixed, and not proportional to the text size. If you plan to work cross platform, try and keep text boxes not too "tight" on windows.

I believe it has to do with layout mac using several os native tools for text rendering, not available on windows.

25 right now... burrrrrr...

@abdsinc said:

Is there a way to "end" the command?

you can switch tools.. (spacebar for select.. E gives the eraser. etc.)

but i think you're better off, at least in the exact scenario you posted, if you:

draw the shapes with no fill..
split everything
join everything
style to fill the shape with color (which is weird at first because you're so used to sketchup and it's faces.. you have to click an edge to fill it..)

despite the different wording I suppose this is resolved. If you have this problem, try updating. Might save a headache or consternation.

in the 'shape style' panel, click on the 'fill' button (i.e.- turn off the fill behavior)

Thank you David & David,

I guess I had Senior Moment.

Everyone on this site has been so helpful. I must learn to try harder before troubling you.

Have also, as requested updated my profile.

Thank you again.
Regards,
Andrew

@krisidious said:

I've learned to use my PDF995 to print PDFs out of Layout. It's much faster and the file sizes are 1000 times smaller with all the detail. It's a pdf printer port emulator.

Clever

I would highly recommend that you shift to doing all your text in LO including the dimensions. If you must have dimensions displayed in SU, put the on a layer you can turn off after you've put them in in LO or simply select all the dimensions SU and delete them when you are finished with them.