+1 Better even if we were able to draw linestyles directly in Sketchup. A work around I use (not often) is to use the SU eraser tool with shift/control modifiers and a style with hidden lines turned on. The problem is that In LO those linestyles are only displayed in raster mode...

For now, the best you can do is to nudge one model with the arrow tools and then align just by eyeballing it. b

OK, I think I can answer that: yes. Create your own template, and insert a dummy model (nothing in it but Sang), set to Ortho and set the scale in the SketchUp Model inspector (set the view you want, too). File->Save as Template. Now create a new SketchUp model, send to LayOut, and your model should have the correct view and scale that you want. It plays off of the blog post I wrote - http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/2010/01/connecting-sketchup-scenes-to-layout.html b

No, but that's an interesting request. I could see having a "use model drawing scale in measurements box" checkbox, but what if you have multiple models per page? You'll have to use the inference and then move lines - e.g. trace a line over a model, inferencing it's endpoints and then moving or rotating the drawn line if necessary. There are a lot of LayOut users that do this to trace over models in this way to put emphasis on lines. b

File menu > New from template...

You can actually edit your SU lines if you turn vector or hybrid rendering on (the default is raster)* then explode the SU drawing in LO - then the model will act like deeply nested groups in SU so you need to double click to edit until you can select the individual set of edges. [image: LOShapeStyle.jpg] Note that this (exploding) is a destructive and irreversible operation which will ultimately beak the linkage between that particular SU viewport in LO and the embedded skp file so only do this when you know you are ready with the modelling phase. Of course, you can always delete just that exploded viewport and insert the skp file again - the model itself won't be affected this way. if you explode it while raster rendering is on, it will become an image that you can open/edit in an external application and it will instantly reload upon saving.

thanks gaieus that's exactly what i want, strangely I think I have used that in the past so feel a bit silly. Anyway thanks for your help much appreciated.

Can you explain how you think that's backwards? Once you know about layers, it seems right to me that the topmost layer takes precedence, and then items within each layer determine the drawing order. How would you do it? Thanks for any feedback. b

@bjanzen said: For #2 - if it's not showing up on other pages, then it's on the wrong layer. It's pretty easy to check what layer things are drawn on. To do this, right click on the layer name and select "Select Entities", and everything drawn on that layer will be selected. Alternatively, you can select an item, for example a text box, and in the layer inspector you'll see a little blue dot show up on the layer that the entity is on. To move an item to the correct layer, select the correct layer in the layer inspector, then right click on the item and select "move to current layer". Then re-save your template. Let me know if that helps. b Hi bjanzen, Heres how it behaves on my computer. I tried it on my customized template and on another one (titleblock modern). For the page number: 1-it is on the Unique Elements layer. 2- On the second page (called Inside Page in the template), visibility on, locked or unlocked, and shared on 1 page. 3- If I press the + button to add a new, I new is created called Page 3 or whatever, then everything is copied except the page number and whatever else on that same layer. 4- Then, I try to press the share on all pages button and the page number reappears on the newly created page (page 3). 5- Then again, I change the number to "3" and go back to page 2 (Inside page)to see the "3" appearing on that page too. What is wrong with me? Jerome EDIT I tried the duplicate page button instead of the add a page button and it worked for the page page number. Can someone confirm it is suppose to work that way? Then I dont understand the purpose of the add page button**

Thanks, i will continue with Photoshop and PNG Pictures.

That last sentence should have read "for the stand-in MODEL that's in the LayOut template." Let me know if that's not clear. b

No problem with several discussions about an issue - it shows there isan issue - so that people will easier find it.

Thanx a lot Gai, you are so precious!

Thank you Ansi. BullZip and the import text as curves worked well.

Hi Charlie- Sadly no, this one hasn't been fixed (as of v2013), but it hasn't been forgotten. thanks, Marc

Hi Orch, thanks for staying on this topic--you have succeeded in verifying for me what it is that I was doing (wrong) every once in a while, (like yesterday!) namely, losing track of the active section plane, especially in models containing a lot of them. And Gai-good tip to check their status before updating, mystery solved. ...And btw, I'm probably the last person standing to have finally found the "Hide in other scenes" plugin. (if there's a better one, I'd love to hear about it...)

Do you have "Preserve Scale on Resize" checked (it's in the SketchUp Model Inspector's View tab)? I just tried it with the standard views with ortho projection, and when I changed the scale on each scene, it added "(Modified)" in front of each of the scene names, but did NOT change the scaling when I changed geometry and materials. I may not be doing thing exactly the way you are, so here's what I did: I created a simple SketchUp model with 7 scenes, each with Camera->Parallel Projection, and the 7 views you get from Camera->Standard Views. I sent this to layout, and created 7 pages, each with a page matching the name of the view (top, bottom, etc...) and changed the scale to 1/4" = 1' (1:48) on each page. Preserve scale on resize was checked. I then went back to SketchUp and changed a few things (geometry of building, materials, etc...), updated a scene, saved, then back to LayOut and updated the skp model reference. Everything stayed the same for me. More info if you can, because if this is happening, I can see how it would be a pain. b

Since it seems that the windows version of LO doesn't support font kerning, the best way I've found to manage this is to write the text with an image editor and export it as png image with transparent background. Photoshop has a quite good text management and supports well text kerning. If you have to put some text labels in your LO file (i.e. 'elevation north' or 'level 04'), it's good to set up a new Photoshop file with a grid and write down the text for your labels. Don't forget size and scale: i wrote my text @ 300 dpi. Then with the slice tool cut all the labels and export them all at once with the 'save for internet' option in the menu 'file'. Save them as plain png images, since the html code is useless in this case. Now you're ready to import the labels in LO and position them. Your text will look more elegant now! I guess that you can do the some with The Gimp and most of the image editors available.

You can right click on the layer name, and choose "select entities". This will select all the objects on the layer, which would be close to what I think you want to do. After selecting all the objects you want to change, you can then change the settings using the shape style, or use the sample tool (default shortcut "s") and click on the shape you want to change the style settings to. (this is in SketchUp 7)

Yes, as an example, go to the arrows scrapbook, page Arrows | 3D | Curved. These are really SketchUp models, so you can open them in SketchUp, adjust fog, color, camera angle, etc... then insert in LayOut. b