Gaius, thanks for the advice you're the man. However this is just a hack - honestly we need dashed lines in layout, like an option or a style in layout to dash all lines on a layer.

bjanzen, why don't you send me a set of construction docs you've put together with LayOut. If they look halfway decent then i'll shut up.

Point is LayOut is 'nice', and it works OK, but it's 'nice' in the same way that doesn't get you laid at a bar. We need something with some real horsepower, maybe not something that can design the next high-rise but at least something that can hold it's own.

Ok i'm going to stop talking about this until I have something real to report. Updated CDs should be done this week i'll post them.

KJM

@bjanzen said:

Aw, come on, baseLINE, you're not motivating me to help out here...

When you mention "Also came up with a dashed lines routine using a custom sketchup style with dashed lines. The only thing that sucks about it is that you have to have it render in 'raster' instead of vector so the dashed lines are kind of fuzzy looking. ", please select the model in LayOut and render as vector (in the SketchUp Model inspector) and they'll look sharper. I've played around with crude hatching patterns doing this, and it's not totally worthlessly sucking bad .

b

It's not my job to motivate you. Man-up and put out a viable product, or people are going to go somewhere else.

Also you can't do vector with a dashed linestyle (from style builder) because it turns it into a solid line. But thanks for assuming that I didn't know how to switch between vector and raster in layout, that was awesome.

Just read what you wrote, it's f*ing garbage. As somebody on the SketchUp team, your job is either to say "you're right we'll get on that" or don't say anything at all. You make me mad when you are apologizing for it's shortcomings. Just make it better, thats your job so just do it. wtf.

Layout is extremely unstable from my experience. One way to fix this is to turn off the 'Auto Render' check box. Before I did this it would quit when i would switch between sheets. Very frustrating.

Came up with a new procedure for linking the SU - LO files that allows for 'hatched' walls as shown in the file below. No 'make faces' plug-in needed, so walls/hatch all update with the model.

Also came up with a dashed lines routine using a custom sketchup style with dashed lines. The only thing that sucks about it is that you have to have it render in 'raster' instead of vector so the dashed lines are kind of fuzzy looking.

Models consist of a few layers - Walls (e), (r), (n), a floor/details/cabinets/stair/doors layer, and an 'above' layer. I like the looks of the final result and have only a few comments about layout:

LAYOUT: WHY ARE YOUR LINESTYLES SO CRAPPY? WHERE IS A GOOD DASHED VECTOR LINE STYLE? WHERE IS MY BUBBLE LINE? WHY DO YOU CRASH WHEN I TRY TO EXPORT?

Ok so here is the deal: after going through this whole experience with SU-LO, I am seriously looking at buying Vectorworks. Yeah it's not as fun but I'm getting paid to be productive and LO makes it really hard.

I've come up with a nice template file now that should save me some time, but seriously do I want to have to go through this crap every time with SketchUp? Making construction docs, even just a respectable floor plan, is painful at best. As much as I like Google I honestly know that they don't give a crap about architects/designers. It's too bad because they have a product that could be pretty good if they cared to develop a few things about it. Sad, too, I used to be SU's biggest supporter.

SketchUp - LayOut Floor Plan

I'm proposing the following guidelines for a good DC based on an actual product (example - the Marvin DC windows collection). As manufacturers move toward providing their content as SketchUp components or as some of the DC producers out there go about their business, they observe good modeling practices. This is a general outline I have been working on, and I was hoping to get some input/feedback from the community:

The model and all model geometry should live on the zero layer
When component models are loaded into the larger building model, it is important not to upset the layer conventions being used by the designer. Many models available today break this rule, containing multiple layers for different aspects of the model, with lax naming conventions, etc. A correctly built component will live on 'Layer 0', preserving the overall models layer structure.
The model should be made up of nested sub-components and groups.

The model should contain proper part/company/info
This information is what drives the purchase of the physical part - extremely useful to designers and builders, it ensures that the proper information is represented both physically and numerically. Short of being a sales pitch, this section should contain just the facts about the product.

Colors should be accurate, selectable, and optimized
Within the component options should be embedded the color options/combinations represented in the correct hues for the product. This allows the designer to experiment with the correct colors and textures (ex- wood styles) while being confident that the colors will represent what the actual product colors will be.

An overlooked facet of texture/color embedding is the texture optimization - this means that textures embedded in the model should be detailed enough to convey the look and feel of the product, but not overly detailed so that they artificially inflate the size of the overall model.

One dynamic component model should represent an entire product line and the available options
Each product line should be represented by one dynamic model containing the possible sizes, colors, installation details, and other options. This frees the designer in a few important ways: it makes the model easier to locate initially because instead of searching through all 100 combinations of a particular product to find the right one he can download one model that allows option of selecting and combining different combinations. It also speeds updating and review of the model, as no additional searching/downloading of a different sized components, simply select and update the existing component in the model.

Components should contain links to manufacturing company's website
For ordering/product information.

Components should contain the correct amount of detail
This is a judgement call, but should allow any rendering to be accurate, but should not so 'heavy' as to weight down the model it is being loaded into.

Models should contain a link to AutoCAD details and product specs
Ideally these would be hosted on the Sweets.com network or similar site

Models should be tagged and easy to find
The 3D warehouse can be a jungle - make it easier to find your components by clearly tagging them and making sure the picture that appears in the 3DW is clear.

Model boundaries should represent scalable endpoints
This is less of an issue in dynamic components with selectable size options or disabled scaling handles, but nothing is more annoying than trying to stretch a door or window with installation tabs on it, making it all but impossible to stretch it to the opening in your wall, etc.

Materials should be named appropriately, with translucent/transparent/light emitting materials properly defined
Component and material naming is important to producing models that translate well to rendering and other programs (revit, kerkythea, etc).

I'm sure there are many other things that make a good DC collection - I would like to build a comprehensive list - a 'grading' system if you will to help define good characteristics of good component models. I think this is a big step to having a strong set of dynamic components that represent real-life products, my crusade to helping SU compete with much of the other software out there. Our advantage over other software will be when we have a robust, accurate, reliable library of components to work from. But before we can get there, we need to know what it is that we're shooting for.

Keep your eyes peeled to this discussion - I'm working right now on a paired SketchUp / Layout template (whenever I get a spare minute) that I plan to post. This would have sections, styles, layers, etc all set up beforehand - simply build your model on the template and CDs would be easy to export.

As for dimensions, I put my dimensions on a separate layer within my SU model and then link them in layout as an overlay.

Template should be up by appx. May 1.

kyle

In general the Component Browser sucks. The fact that I have to connect to the 3DW every time I want to download a model, the frequency of finding out that i've downloaded a 'kewl' model instead of something actually useful, the tiny preview pictures that are basically useless, terrible descriptions of the models, ugh. I can honestly say that i dread using the Component Browser in SketchUp - one of the few things I can say that about, but wow what a weak ass point of the program.

Which brings me to my next question, is anybody developing a parallel Component Browser ruby that addresses these problems? It would be a really valuable asset to the SketchUp community, and could help SU compete with other BIM programs like Revit, etc.

Now that we have Dynamic Components we need to have access to them in a clean, clear, useful and efficient way - exactly the opposite of what the Component Browser currently offers.

Kyle J Marsh
baselinecadstudio.com

1. Ability to create door/window schedules based on components in the model.

2. Ability to assign different lineweights to different layers.

Few more variations on the same theme.

SketchUp version of previous design...