Thanks Gaieus.
That should help me a lot

Thanks, the Document setup- ref dialogue update works efficiently.

Ah yes, Barry, that's what Sandra told me, too, as a workaround for the current situation (I didn't dare to come back with it here though...) 😉

@logscape said:

Hi, I'm new to LO. I would like to know how is the correct way to import cross sections from a SU model

What I've been doing is to make a scene in SYU that has the relevant section plane active, use the 'add section cut-face' plugin to add faces across the cuts, manually delete the spurious ones, apply colours to match the parts that are cut and sometimes selecting the edges and unhiding them. Then align the cut face in the scene, save the model and send to LO. I haven't had any trouble with making dimensions snap to the places I need - perhaps having the filled in cut faces is the key?

In LO I just select the relevant view and scale and style. I get this sort of thing -sample sections.pdf and yes, LO doesn't always do a perfect job of the rendering for some reason. Sometimes it comes out beautifully, then you change something, update and it leaves out some edges or whatever. Odd.

Thank Gaieus, That seems to help.

Regards Philip

That logo is on a shared layer, I think "On Every Inside Page". Windows->Layers and unlock that layer, and replace that logo with yours.

I tried all three methods (raster,vesctor, hybrid) and none worked.
As a note: I set the line weight in the styles panel of LO to 0.1 to have thinner lines (the default 1 was too fat).

As I mentioned before, the PDF looks OK in Acrobat Reader (all lines are there), so I am pretty sure it is something in Photoshop, or a change in the PDF format that LO exports...
I'll try to Google this specific Photoshop issue and see what it brings up.

Thanks that seemed to be the problem.

@matteo said:

yes, you are right Juan, I'm experiencing that Layout 2.1 is very solid and stable. 👍

Yes and no, in an odd way. I go for days without any problems at all in LO and then suddenly (with the same model!) have a patch where it blows up anytime I look at it the wrong way. I had a spate of total 'poof' crashes a couple of weeks ago; no crashlog, no bugsplat, nothing, just ... gone.

@unknownuser said:

Insert it anywhere or somewhere specific?

Where you put it doesn't matter. Just open the file and you'll see
a bunch of other entries that look like the block of text you need to
insert. If you're using an editor that doesn't format the text so that
you see other blocks of settings like the one you need to insert, try
write.exe. Do Windows Key->r to open the run dialog and type in
write.exe and then open preferences.xml in there.
For example it would look like this after you insert-

<t:dicItem key="read_old_file_version_warning">
<t:variant type="1">0</t:variant>
</t:dicItem>

<t:dicItem key="render_ST">
<t:variant type="1">1</t:variant>
</t:dicItem>

<t:dicItem key="su_render_hybrid_warning">
<t:variant type="1">0</t:variant>
</t:dicItem>

Hi red, Go here for info. Mahalo

I find printing directly from layout to be a real problem, it never gets it right. I can only imagine that the sheer size of my layout files are way too much for my printers. I've had up to 50 meg files and I just don't have the memory in the printer to handle that.

I always export to pdf then print but even then, there are some problems which, thankfully can usually be solved. My models are always in hybrid mode which tends to make huge pdfs, like 50+ megs big ( which could explain why the printer can't handle that) BUT to fix this, inside adobe acrobat you can reduce the file size which reduces the pdf so much it boggles my mind. I've had a file go from 74 megs to 5 megs. I don't know what it's doing but it works and I don't lose quality of the file.

BUT the problem is that sometimes after all of that the print still doesn't work, it prints one of the images and no lines or 4 out of 5 pages are fine and one is messed up even though the pdf looks fine. I traced those types of problems to missing reference files or ones that need updates, so see if your references are correct. Other than that I'm not sure.

jsteacy

@unknownuser said:

Hi Eric

Am I right to say that if you modify the dimension of an element in SU, the related dimension created in Layout will not be updated?

That's correct Bert, you have to go back and manually edit your dimensions. I think this is actually a smart way to dimension. There are a lot of "free form" CAD softwares out there that feature "automatic" dimensioning. They are not foolproof though. Typically, when I use those features, I get mixed results, and I end up switching them all to manual. If I can't trust the program to automatically edit my dimensions, I have to go check them all anyway...

If you want to check out my blog entry, go to the first post in this email. That blog entry was also featured in the Google Sketchup blog a few months ago as well.

Thanks to you all. I had somehow missed the fact that the stacking order of layers controlled visibility. And I liked your layer tips, Eric.

Frankly, I'm disappointed in the dimensioning quality of Layout. Sketchup, well, I can understand dimensions might be limited there. But Layout. Heck, that's its name! Next to 'layout' for technical drawings are dimensions and the inability to do basic rad/dia dimensioning is pitiful.

Hi Eric,

Also when the section plane is hidden (toggled off with the button in its toolbar)?

Interesting because over the Google SU Help Forums, it has also come out with this above results but then Sandra (in that "yet another" forum) also says she is able to snap but I cannot (and obviously others have problems with this, too).

thanks Erik I will give it a go. I didnt know thta could be done 👍

About section plane to display or not (and the section to display or not), you may create a style (from the house icon, save it by right click on your style library) with these "forced" options (checked).

Because the style library is shared with Layout, you may fix the problem from Layout by selecting the special style. A lot of time saved and very ergonomic solution !

I have saved for example these styles :

Colored fine with section (only section displayed, without section planes) Colored fine without section (no section & section planes displayed)

As I said in another thread, I have layers for everything, title block, notes, dimensions, model, etc.

The first thing I do when I send something to LayOut is setup the model view I want, and then lock that layer.

Thanks guys. Some info about this problem:

1- There are no text saved at all, on any of Xml files;
2- The problem isn't only about the text - some imported images disappears too, and the LO shows a red "X" on screen over those objects;
3- If I have some 4 or 5 objects from one or more big sketchup models, and some images and text, the problem occurs when activating the "hybrid" rendering on those objects - then some bitmap images "disappears" from screen - next time to try open the file, and LO shows this message then exit: "Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library - Runtime Error! - Program: (empty) - This application requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please contact the application's support team for more information". Even the debug window do not shows up.

The system is a XP64 still Sp2, with several GB of Ram, and LO never uses more that 1.5 GB.