Can you get a print-to-pdf program in Windows? I also tried this with screenshots and it worked OK.Looked pretty good but you probably have to scale up before you insert (to make it look OK) and so you lose the automatically scaling during an update. You have to make the screenshot with LO set to "actual size" zoom, but registration during updates is not automatic.

I sent you a PM.

...I mailed Trimble that the solution for now, is to export a 2d view to a *.skp format. Layout will be snappy and usable then.

Yes, sorry, the ticking box...

Thanks!

OK - Thanks.

DISCOVERED: If I leave LO's VP's as raster, the export process generates a .dwg file PLUS a folder containing the png image files. When the .dwg file is opened with AutoCAD, it xrefs the images - but you can freeze the images layer to have a wireframe visual style, if desired.

This snippet copied/pasted into the Ruby Console + <enter> will save all of the model's definitions out into a selected folder, as separate SKP files...

d=UI.select_directory(title;"Choose Save Components' Directory...");(Sketchup.active_model.definitions.each{|e|e.save_as(File.join(d,e.name.gsub(/[\x00\/\\;\*\?\"<>\|]/,"_")))};UI.openURL("file;///#{d}"))if d

You then need to open each in turn and set up the scene views, with zooms, and re-save etc...
This can also be coded, but it is more than a one-liner...

No ideas or thoughts on this? I'm dead in the water.

thanks for the information, problem solved.

That kind of sounds like a work around for the right method but if it works for you, that's fine.

Hi there! I did renew maintainance blindly too... And I am admitedly worried about the delay. My desktop is kind of old (well, it's old... welp, it's very old), but I had a brand new laptop I got on Saturday that makes LayOut a beauty to work with.

Also, I hope the YouTube channel releases Sonder's content as soon as possible, as he said in a podcast that he was showing the new and improved workflow he uses. I consider Mr. Sonder the God's child of LayOut, more than SketchUp: he surely is one capable modeller, but how he makes LayOut spin makes my mouth watering!

I also use "conventional" 2D cad extensively, and I find LayOut really falling behind when it comes to dimensioning. The best example I can give you is that it doesn't allow to round off at, say, 5 cm (sorry, I'm Italian and I am really bad with the Imperial system). In my work, and I can't find any way to make it work automatically, the only way around it is editing every singular dimension.
Another major flaw is not being able to suppress unwanted extension lines in the dimensions, or to stretch them all at once, not before entering edit mode for them... It REALLY is time consuming.
Also, area (square meters/feet) comunication between SketchUp and LayOut can be vastly improved. Again, nothing that makes it unusable, but a lot that makes it somehow... Clumsy!

I find many differences between US and Italian ConDocs (many of them I try to include in my pojects/documents), and I can see how SketchUp is clearly better suited to the US Standards. Again: it is very (very) usable for me too, and I strongly advocate shifting towards it whenever I can, but it lacks a thing or two to make it really comparable to 2D CADs for small works (which is not bad: I find every tool to be exceptional in one job and not the best in others... But my first try is always SU).

Aside of that, I don't think SketchUp should be stretched further in modelling features (there's the awesome comunity we have for that, and In my works - which goes to full buildings to furniture design - I really need a need just a couple to make my day go smooth, even with topography and terrain surveys - Toposhaper by Fredo6 is astonishingly powerful). I'd go to a better and more capable BIM compatibily, and considering Trimble owns Tekla, I'd say it could be an option we'll see.

It works great. Exactly what I was after. Thank you Dave. Thank you TIG.

Good enough.

Good enough.

Perfect. Thank you very much Dave.

@gspess said:

The issue I'm running into is that drafting in Arch D, all of the scrapbook items come out much smaller than would ever be useful on such a size of paper. See example here - https://imgur.com/a/HLs56LI

Is there a way to pre-set them to a size appropriate to Arch D? As scaling them keeps the text like a 4pt text.

It certainly is a shame within layout that a modifier key on scaling doesn't scale all content within an object!

That thread is as close as anything I've ever seen to a scrapbook warehouse.

Looking at the SketchUp model, I see those duplicated styles, too. I think you can be confident that your cross reference organizer application is the culprit. If you simply purge unused styles, you'll get rid of a few duplicates. You would need to go through and manually do the rest but it won't be that difficult. Find a scene that uses the duplicate, select the original version of the style and update the scene. When you get all finished, purge unused styles again and you should be down to five styles in this model.

I would suggest that for the following scenes, you set the style to Hidden Line with white back and then reselect those scenes for the viewports on the last two pages. Don't let viewports show the scenes as modified. SEC SHORT 2, SEC LONG 5, SEC SHORT 4, and SEC LONG 4.

As for the file bloat, you're right. The use of duplicated styles doesn't help but in addition to some unused styles, I purged what you see below.
Screenshot - 9_17_2018 , 7_08_41 AM.png

Keep in mind that components and materials you may have had in the model space but deleted or replaced remain as part of the SketchUp file. Styles you might use but replace will also remain. Since it sounds like you are combining multiple SketchUp models into one, I would recommend purging unused stuff from the files before amalgamation. Purge Unused from Model Info>Statistics is a good single step method. I use TIG's Purge All because I like to see that little report window to have some idea of what was purged. It's also undoable. I have a keyboard shortcut established for it and run it before closing a file.

Hows's this? The top is a screen grab from SketchUp while the bottom is from LayOut.
Screenshot - 9_11_2018 , 6_57_43 AM.png

The difference in color is due to the fact that in SketchUp you didn't have a straight on view of the model so the shader that creates the impression of 3D is doing its thing.

You missed a few very important steps.

In SketchUp, you need to set up a scene for the view you want to see in LayOut.
Screenshot - 9_11_2018 , 7_06_02 AM.png

In LayOut, you need to select that scene for the viewport and make sure you don't do anything to make it show as modified.
Screenshot - 9_11_2018 , 7_07_07 AM.png

You need only select the Scene. Do not adjust the Standard Views in LayOut, don't open the viewport to change the camera position, either. You can adjust the size of the viewport window and adjust the scale of the model without making it modified.

It's also unwise to use Last saved SketchUp view since this is not a v fixed scene.

In your case you have modified the Last saved SketchUp view.
Screenshot - 9_11_2018 , 7_12_30 AM.png

Here's the revised file.Dansbandet.layout

Did you install SketchUp/LayOut 2017 correctly when you did install it? That is, did you right click on the installer exe file and choose Run as administrator while you were logged into Windows as your normal user?