I've used it when I don't have PS, by drawing a circle around the image I want to crop, creating a clipping mask, then adjusting the bezier controls (double click on the circle, add / delete points, adjust curvature, etc..). Not a PS replacement, but works in a pinch.

b

Thanks for the reply, I will endeavor to research how I am not doing it right.
I had a deadline, so I cobbled my way thru and got some prints out, my files are a mess, but the prints are at the Building Department....
I would really appreciate your insights,
if it is possible I would be willing to post the files and glean your perspectives as this "model"
has too many versions, the outliner crashes when I try to organize it, and I have way to many versions of "autosave-autosave-autosave-model"...
thanks
aloha
red

here's the file saved as "MHElectricalPlanUL(upper level)

MHElectrical PlanUL~.zip

Thanks for that insight,
I will give it a try too!
There is nothing like real work practical experience and you are sharing that.
Much appreciated.
To meet a deadline I did it all by hand...and maybe still can get it in prior to construction.
thanks
aloha
red

One other thing to watch out for. If the selected
Scene has (Modified) in front of it, the resulting
image will not match SU because some render setting
in LO changed causing it to be different than the
Scene in SU.

What version of LayOut are you using?
What OS are you running?

I had the same problem. In my case, I had the viewport grouped with another object and I was trying to create a clipping mask on the Group. Once I figured that out, I was able to go into the group, draw the shape in the group, select the viewport and the clipping mask I wanted, and things worked perfectly.

Hope this helps.

WG

Barry,
that really helped,
thanks,
and I will look into it as soon as I can.
aloha
red

Yeah. I'd have forgotten about my first post long ago if I'd asked.

@xrok1 said:

although, who says you can't change it the dims in SU then update in LO? 😆

You could - a rectangle of a SU model. Here it's about a shape in LayOut however (imagine a rectangular area with borders around a text). 😉

@John; well, at least you CAN scale it at all! 😄

So it shows the link as missing.

As you say, that doesn't prevent you, however, from doing edits and saving them, but the updated link is not "functionable"; you'd have to save a copy of the SU file to your PC or a server, then re-link to that.

I was kind of surprised by this. After creating a Layout file, I deleted my original SKP fle. When I opened the Layout file and edited the viewport with SU, my link path was identical that which you have shown. It is interesting to me though, that when I did a File > Save As or File > Save a Copy As that an "external" file was created in my Document and Settings path [see below].

I would have thought the process of updating the invalid link in Layout would have automatically searched this location and revised itself and shown that path.

SaveAs.png

Text doesn't import... or it didn't, I haven't tried that plugin... But I'm going to hunt it down.

Sometimes the style setting don't translate from SU to Layout.
Right click on the model window and go to Styles and select the style "As modified" in the SU version.

The Layout viewing of the style can be different from the actual Su Model. And If point and hatch has been deselected in the Architectural style in SU they will show up in Layout.

I was having the same issue aith those stupid points showing up.

Guy Tuttle

If you want to do some vector post processing on Layout Files bringing PDF into Adobe Illustrator is a great option. You can turn things on or off, change line style, added or change text.

You can also turn around and save the Illustrator files back as dwg file. CS3 and CS4 support importing and exporting to scale, so you can bring your exported dwg back to full scale.

Illustrator can also be used to bring PDF's into SketchUp as vector files using same technique. PDF opened, saved as dwg, and then imported into SketchUp.

On a Mac, under the "Windows" menu, choose Colors (or the key combo ShiftCommandC), which will open the standard color pallete you are used to in most Mac programs.

You can then either double click on the text or use the text tool to highlight the text and change the color to what ever your heart desires.

Hope that is clear.

Karl

Can anyone recommend the Sketchup Construction Documents book from first hand experience?

yep, just remember to be 'inside' the group your want scaled otherwise it'll resize the entire model. if you want say 5 grouped objects to all be scaled, just group them, enter inside and scale. explode then to get it back to your 5 groups.

In Layout I dont beleive you can. I suggest you change the opacity in photoshop and save it as a .png.

Picture 1.png