thanks guys!
s4u looks a lot better as they remain solids. (of course there is this 20 dollar price hm hm...)
any ideas for roof tile plugins?

Hi all,
a question regarding roof tiles:
I work in Greece and a lot of my projects are residences with roman roof tiles. There only plugin that I know is instant roof but it only creates 'extrusions' and not 'real' roof tiles.

My current workflow is to create a 2d array of roof tiles on each of the roof's surfaces and trim it in the edges using solid tools. but it is veeery time consuming. So I have two questions:

1. is there a plugin that can operate multiple boolean subtractions with a single object?
   *I want to subtract a single solid from multiple roof tiles, as in the picture bellow. (currently I copy the solid, perform a subtraction, it vanishes, I paste it in place, perform the next subtraction, it vanishes again and so on...)

2. Is there any smarter solution for good roof tiles?

actually skipping one sleep, 'render night'
opportunity to brush up my Layout skills in the waiting times
P.S. I owe you one mousaka for your help

I see now!!!
I falsely assumed that whatever is not controlled by the styles is automatically passed on to layout.
Ok, I am starting to be convinced now of what you're saying
but still, it is a limitation of the software that forces you to set many scenes. It is not a bug but it is a limitation. If you could control those things from LO you wouldn't need to end up with tenths of scenes!

thanks for giving your time!

here they are, I uploaded both files (they're very small anyway)

box.layout

box.skp

Yes! I realized that it might be related the moment I started writing...
but I checked it and even with a clean new file, and with LO referencing an unchanged scene(i.e.no new style was applied to it in LO) the problem remains: shadows on ground do not go away

I am starting to suspect this is a bug. The sun position updates but all the settings in shadow/display tab do not.

Hi all,

This is a problem I keep on stumbling upon with layout and I'm guessing the answer must be simple but I still haven't figured it out:

sometimes, I change within SU the "shadows on ground" setting, but if I have already referenced a scene in LO, it does not update

Unfortunately, I see that this setting cannot be controlled within a style (just shadows on/off) and there is no control for it in LO.

does anybody have any idea for a fix?

Ok, my bad!
the problem arose from the fact that I have a library of styles that is in my assets folder
(I avoid keeping libraries in any program's native folder, so that with any upgrade/format/new pc I can have everything in one place, and not worrying that I might erase some library in any program's native folder)
"The golden rule: reference libraries, don't keep them in the program's folder"

It appears that layout was indeed syncing with the su folder, it's just that my library wasn't there.

(BTW: it would be a good thing for layout to automatically detect any referenced (favorite) libraries from sketchup)

Now, since you said "This results in damaging the link between the original scene in SketchUp and the viewport in LayOut." and I think I saw you saying again somewhere in the forum, may I ask how it is damaged?

The workflow I've set up so far is as follows: I use scenes only to define active sections (no camera, no style, no nothing, just the active section) and then I have a few styles, each with two variants: one with sections and one without. that way for example I can have an east elevation and just by changing the style it becomes an east section.

The reason I do this is because otherwise, just for a simple house I would need to make 12 or more scenes. but this way I only need to make as many scenes as my sections.

So far it has worked great and I haven't had a problem when changing styles. Is there some specific reason you don't advise it?

hi all!
I've been using layout heavily for only the last year and I have a question about styles:
Unlike within sketchup, there is no way to change or add style libraries and you're left with only the default library and the ones that are called from the model scenes.

What I have resorted to, is create a template for sketchup which has 6 scenes and their only use is to bring my own custom styles into layout.

I've searched in appdata/roaming and sketchup's folder but I couldn't find where the layout style library resides. can anybody please help?

Ok,
this might be obvious to our Canadian and American friends, but for the rest of us it wasn't clear what Mark's t shirt was depicting. For the past few days I was wondering in the back of my mind what this map was.

Initially I thought it was a past-or future- supercontinent but then it came to me: It's the great lakes! (a nature's wonder and a sailor's nightmare to navigate)

again: it wasn't a big discovery, but I thought I'd share...

hi guys,
when you place a 3D text on a face in sketchup, by default it shows you the area of that face.
Is there a way to make it show the area of the material that face has (in other words the area of all the faces that share that same material)?
either in sketchup or in layout with automated text.

I will change it right away.
Actually it is a bit annoying. I never use these links and I have to go through this long list before I see my own libraries. It should be customizable
and btw... if you accidentally select one of the warehouse's libraries and you have a slow connection you have to wait until it loads until you can do anything else...
Sketchup is the most user friendly program that I know, but the library part is the only part that is lagging behind.

Hi,NO I am using 2017
Ok, with the materials I was able to remove the links in the dropdown
The only thing remaining are the pesky links to 3d warehouse in the components dropdown...
I bet you must change some line of code to achieve that.

Hi,
Sketchup has a default set of libraries for materials, styles and components.

The problem is that I have found no way to remove the default libraries from sketchup, so everytime I have to go through the long list of defaults to go to my own libraries (in the dropdown list)

I know I can just put my libraries in sketchup's folder but that is a problem because I use a single assets folder for libraries from every program that I use. (that way with every new pc I can just copy this single folder)
I have already changed the paths for components and materials to this assets folder, but the defaults are still stuck in the dropdown...

any thoughts?

In other words: can I control what the dropdown lists for libraries show?

Hi all,
on a similar topic, it would be great to be able to select a group or component and be able to see statistics just for this specific object.
I am working with heavy scenes and cooperating with other people, and sometimes I have to deal with garbage models within the scene
(it is not uncommon to have a flower pot in some obscure corner that takes up half of the scene's file size)

Hi Dave,
thanks for replying so soon but it was a false alarm.
I opened the pdf in the browser and for some reason it had cached the original file. I reopened the new version of the file with the guides hidden and it kept showing me the initial pdf.
It was a browser problem, not a layout problem. once I ctrl+F5'd it it showed the new version.

Hi all,
I found out that SU 2018 rocks!
a small problem with layout though (and it might be just me not understanding something):

I created two layers, one with content and one 'beneath' it with guides (lines and rectangles)
When I exported the pdf, I 'blinded' the guide layer but it still kept being exported to the pdf.
It was only gone when I deleted the layer with its contents.

Is this how it is supposed to work? because it is a problem if you want to update the model and export again at another date.

10 years later and still no repeat command?
Is there any chance somebody might spend some time and make it?
Rhino has it as well and once you get used to it it's verrry handy!!!

hello guys, this is (probably) a request for a paid work.

I have lately received several projects in Greece and had to work with the local standard for coordinates (GR87). There are several apps out there written in C for conversion to WGS84 but It would speed my workflow a great deal if I had a plugin within SU to which I could feed a csv or xls and get

1. an xls with the transformed coordinates
2. actual points within sketchup.

As far as I know the tools that already exist for sketchup do not support GR87. So I would ask if somebody knows a way around this or else pay somebody to write for me this plugin.

thanks!

hello there, I've been working with sketchup for years but this is the first time I realised this is a problem:
when you paint on free geometry, the material applies only to the front of the faces but when you paint a group or component, the material applies to both the front and the back.

This has never been a problem, but now that I have a very complex scene that I import to Lumion, it crashes from the load (I assume it has to calculate each face twice-once for the front and once for the back) So in order to be able to render, I had to change my workflow and reapply materials in the innermost level of the groups. Unfortunately this makes it quite inconvenient...

Is there a specific reason why this happens or could it be fixed? and if not, does anybody know some way around it? (to trough paint on groups and components and only paint the front of the faces)

thanks in advance!