LayOut 2.1 - A warning!!!!

markozeta

Have you tried the new dimensioning tool in LO however?

It'll save me so much time. Had a brief experience with it, but mostly it's getting used to. The dimension you want must be on the same layer as your model, and on windows, there is no context menu to easily adjust your dimensions as the video shows, so you have to enable the "dimensions setting" on the panel.

But otherwise, yeah, it'll save me a ton of time.

bjanzen

I'd like to discuss two things you mentioned:

I believe this is incorrect: "The dimension you want must be on the same layer as your model". We suggest this as a normal workflow (create a dimensions layer if you want to hide all of them on a page, then you can togge the visibility of the layer). What you can't do is put your model on a shared layer and have the dimensions stick to the model as you change the camera or adjust the model in LayOut. Is that what you were thinking?
This is true there's not a context menu, but there's easy ways to do "...and on windows, there is no context menu to easily adjust your dimensions as the video shows, so you have to enable the "dimensions setting" on the panel." If you have dimension styles you want to toggle between, you should create a LayOut document with your different styles, File->Save as Scrapbook, then leave that scrapbook open in LayOut. You can then select the dimensions you want to change style, type "s" (it's in shortcuts as "Other/Pick Style"), sample the dimension style you have in your scrapbook, and "Voila" (or "Viola", for you in the strings section), your dimensions have the new style.

Agree?

b

markozeta

@bjanzen said:

What you can't do is put your model on a shared layer and have the dimensions stick to the model as you change the camera or adjust the model in LayOut. Is that what you were thinking?

Correct. And they don't scale correctly either on the shared layer, either. That makes a lot of sense though, never thought of that.

@bjanzen said:

This is true there's not a context menu, but there's easy ways to do "...and on windows, there is no context menu to easily adjust your dimensions as the video shows, so you have to enable the "dimensions setting" on the panel." If you have dimension styles you want to toggle between, you should create a LayOut document with your different styles, File->Save as Scrapbook, then leave that scrapbook open in LayOut. You can then select the dimensions you want to change style, type "s" (it's in shortcuts as "Other/Pick Style"), sample the dimension style you have in your scrapbook, and "Voila" (or "Viola", for you in the strings section), your dimensions have the new style.

You guys should post a video of this neat little trick as part of your documentation. I think it would help a ton in people realizing how cool these new dimensions can be.

markozeta

@markozeta said:

@bjanzen said:

This is true there's not a context menu, but there's easy ways to do "...and on windows, there is no context menu to easily adjust your dimensions as the video shows, so you have to enable the "dimensions setting" on the panel." If you have dimension styles you want to toggle between, you should create a LayOut document with your different styles, File->Save as Scrapbook, then leave that scrapbook open in LayOut. You can then select the dimensions you want to change style, type "s" (it's in shortcuts as "Other/Pick Style"), sample the dimension style you have in your scrapbook, and "Voila" (or "Viola", for you in the strings section), your dimensions have the new style.

You guys should post a video of this neat little trick as part of your documentation. I think it would help a ton in people realizing how cool these new dimensions can be.

Nevermind that - seems you had it, but it was within the last 15 seconds of the Tyson video, which is after my short attention span saw something shiny.

bjanzen

Yea, but that video wasn't posted yesterday. For those of you scoring at home, the video we're referring to was in sketchupdate.blogspot.com or directly on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5ftd8l7UD4 and look for the end of it for a visual of how to do this. Although my suggestion would still be to create a scrapbook of the styles you want (fonts, line endings, colors line weights) so they're easily sampled and applied.

b

mavie

Regarding LayOut 2.1 warnings, has anyone found that the old layout templates are suddenly unchangeable? I click on the titleblock entities, and nothing is alterable. Is it just me?

Bert

Did you unlock the layer "On Every inside pages" in the layer panel?
If so you should be able to change the title block

AndrewS

@mavie said:

Regarding LayOut 2.1 warnings, has anyone found that the old layout templates are suddenly unchangeable? I click on the titleblock entities, and nothing is alterable. Is it just me?

Are you using a Mac? Starting in LayOut 2.1 on Mac, we're storing the templates in a different location; a place that is not normally user-editable.

This is an intentional thing. You shouldn't be editing Google-provided templates.

If you want a slightly modified or customized version of something we provide, you need to save the template to another location, make your modifications to that copy, and then update your user preferences to look for templates in the additional directory. That will ensure you don't muck with Google-provided templates, while still giving you every bit of functionality you desire with regard to customization.

I hope that helps.

mavie

Yes. I'm on a Mac, and will try your recommendation. Makes more sense. Thanks for the input.

mavie

But actually, merci bien a vous, Bert! That's what I was looking for. Cool.