[REQ] Documentation Plugin
-
The LO concept is fabulous.
Dimensions and annotations are underwhelming. I have in the past asked on this forum if LO users were satisfied with LO dimension features. I think only one person except myself felt dimensioning was unsatisfactory in LO. This thread gives me hope that maybe some of you forum power users might get noticed by the Trimble team and a dialogue for real documentation tools can move forward.
I simply cannot transition any meaningful condoc work to LO. I would like to, but for the level of detail that my work needs, LO is too time consuming. I am still very disappointed with LO dimension and annotation features.
-
@sfto1 said:
I simply cannot transition any meaningful condoc work to LO. I would like to, but for the level of detail that my work needs, LO is too time consuming. I am still very disappointed with LO dimension and annotation features.
Well I can and I have a lot of detail on my work too. The question is that working with Sketchup compensates largely the encumbrance that dimensioning and annotating brings me in LO.
Considering dimensioning, pagination and annotation are only at most 5% of the time invested in a project of mine and that from all the time invested. Maybe 15% max time is in Layout, and that if I didn't have LO I'd have to spend 20-40% of my time working with CAD, I'd say that I'm perfectly happy with the very difficult to work with LO.
After all it's taking me the at the worst scenario the same amount of time I'd have with CAD, in the best scenario I'm working half the time in LO I would have to work on CAD, so I guess I still find useful exchanging CAD for LO.
The question is that working with layout itself isn't rewarding and that is bad user experience.
The pdf and printed results are also excellent (graphically it's way better than CAD) but dwg export might be one of the worse downfals.
I'll keep working with it but it's always the worse part of my job...
-
I concur with JQL. LO is the best solution for my workflow, but it is, for sure, the worst part of my job, too...
-
Considering all said, the best thing would be to clone AutoCAD (LT) 2D UI in LO. Basic thing at least. Maybe AutoCAD plugin? In the end, a few decades gone in improving them trough the use. There is no better 2D drafting tool from where to start. Especially when everybody know to use it. That is why there is so much AutoCAD clones out there. Why not making LO one of them? ...I tried a few of the clones though and the main problem was the robustness and stability of the engine in big drawings...so that is the value of the original.
-
I do miss the simplicity and infinite precision of autocad sometimes.
-
@srx said:
Considering all said, the best thing would be to clone AutoCAD (LT) 2D UI in LO. Basic thing at least. Maybe AutoCAD plugin? In the end, a few decades gone in improving them trough the use. There is no better 2D drafting tool from where to start. Especially when everybody know to use it. That is why there is so much AutoCAD clones out there. Why not making LO one of them? ...I tried a few of the clones though and the main problem was the robustness and stability of the engine in big drawings...so that is the value of the original.
NAY to this one... sorry.
The drafting tools I need are the ones available in Sketchup cloned into Layout and working like Sketchup ditching the way they work in Layout. No more, no less.
- line, rectangle, rotated rectangle, circle, all arcs and pie, polygon, freehand work great in Sketchup and also nicely on LO but they don't break each other that sucks as I hate the knife and Glue tools;
- Move, Rotate, Offset and scale should behave like Sketchup (please forget about grips and that horrible gizmo) use shortcuts/icons and forget about drag clicking too;
- I do not need solid fills for shapes as we currently do, what I need is face finding as in Sketchup (this is where Sketchup shines if you're 2D drafting with it and CAD sucks. I simply design my 2D stuff in Sketchup and only have a CAD clone to clean CAD files I create from LO and CAD files I need to import into Sketchup.)
- Components (Groups are there already)
What I would clone from CAD but keep styled like LO would be dimensions, texts, tables and layer management (on/off, isolate, select from object, change object to current layer, send to layer, etc...) this could be done on context menu without a problem.
I think LO leaders might eventually get there someday so they shouldn't be cloned right yet... I'll wait to see what happens.
Text styling and paragraph writing should change to any software standard.
Areas from LO shapes would be key for us to have a working tool for areas. Being able to hide some of the areas but still use these area's data in a table would be excellent to create area tables to show along floor plans data and the ability to export this kind of tables to excel/ods would be great.
Excel/ODS tables should cohexist with a Sketchup Generate Report and imported cleanly and simply, updating as the file updates. We should be able to introduce data we get from model into any xls/ods file embedded in LO file and it would be updated in the original file.
We should also be able to retrieve and export any data from a LO file into an excel/ods for creating stuff like an index page, that areas table, dimensions of windows tables, whatever we wish...
-
jQL The fills are very useful. no reason for LO to be exactly like SU IMO. it's a 2d graphic SW not a surface modeler. As it is the drawing tools allow real curves and curve control. Wouldn't want to loose that. if you want segmental drawing as in SU, you can always draw in SU and put it in LO.
the gizmo is useless, and the way resizing works is weird. I could see some functions might be nicer if they just followed SU.
Many ideas to make documentation easier-many that overlap. I have no need to see LO look or act like AutoCAD. Just some more adult CAD / illustration tools. The answer may be one for all: add ruby open source capability.
-
@pbacot said:
jQL The fills are very useful.
Fills or faces work the same way graphically speaking. I prefer the face workflow.
@pbacot said:
As it is the drawing tools allow real curves and curve control.
That is true, but I suppose that for finding faces curves could be used too.
@pbacot said:
I have no need to see LO look or act like AutoCAD. Just some more adult CAD / illustration tools.
Agreed, but with good workflow wich currently isn't what LO offers. Specially with repetitive tasks LO workflow is pretty bad, making us repeat countless clicks and dragclicking the mouse around!
-
What's your definition of real curves? All I see is segmented lines...
I like fill better than faces. faces do strange things when I copy paste into layout and I can't trust them... Always doing strange stuff.
-
@krisidious said:
What's your definition of real curves? All I see is segmented lines...
Nothing technical. After all in LO there is little information attached to the objects we draw. Only, if I draw an arc or draw a curve with the pencil tool grips, it looks smooth at any zoom level (at least to my eyes). It behaves similar to other illustration SW. I notice that shapes like arcs and rectangles don't retain their character after you draw them. An object drawn with the arc tool just becomes another bezier object.
(For layout and control of a drawing, it would be great to have real (and enduring) circles and arcs, which we don't have in either SU or LO)
Oh and in anticipation of further comments, I know circles are an abstraction (or maybe geometry is reality and we're the abstraction).
-
@krisidious said:
What's your definition of real curves? All I see is segmented lines...
I like fill better than faces. faces do strange things when I copy paste into layout and I can't trust them... Always doing strange stuff.
Of course I don't mean faces that misbehave but faces like Sketchup's how can you not like those? They do all the same things Layout
faces(EDIT: fills)do! -
Agreed... In SU I like faces. Once in LO I hate faces.
Advertisement