Yea, there's good and bad to be had from using Apple's color panel, and this would be one of the bad ones. We'd have to re-engineer this to give you lists (doable, if enough people think it's a big deal and there's not a reasonable workaround).

But try this workaround: Close SketchUp Pro. Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app and type or copy / paste this line in (at your own risk, Earth will stop to rotate and we'll be sucked into a black hole, all disclaimers, etc, etc...):

defaults write com.google.sketchuppro7 NSInitialToolTipDelay -int 100

so it's now responding at 100 milliseconds. If you don't like that, you can delete the defaults or adjust the "100" number to something that works for you. To delete, quite SketchUp Pro, type:

defaults delete com.google.sketchuppro7 NSInitialToolTipDelay

Be careful to get ALL of that, because leaving off the "NSInitialToolTipDelay" will delete all of your preferences. Let me know if that helps.

b

Oh, I should point out that on Mac, it's not importing PDF's as vector; for that, you'll need Illustrator, output to dxf, into SketchUp, etc...

Macs insert PDF's because it's an OS thing. There are a number of things that we have to work a bit harder to make work on PC, and this is one. If you can't get your hands on a Mac, then get ghostscript, or buy Illustrator... search previous posts on how to do this.

b

It's usually from leaving on Auto rendering, then having a lot of high resolution rendering to do for any change you make (large paper size), and hybrid or vector rendering. So you can try the follwing:

1. Uncheck "Auto" rendering in the SketchUp Model inspector and then select a viewport and click the render button only when necessary.
2. Keep renderings in Raster (SketchUp Model inspector) until you're ready to do a final output, then you can change to Hybrid or Vector.
3. Decrease your edit resolution to "low" while you're working with the document. File->Document Setup->Paper->Rendering Resolution, change pulldown from "Medium" to "Low".
4. Check File->Document Setup->References, and click purge. (This may not be a performance gain, but it's good to keep your document synced up).

We try to make this easy, but you have to realize how big the created rendered files are that you're creating when you render.

Others?

b

Here's a couple of possibilities: You have to click on geometry of the model, not just the bounding box. Try command (mac) control (pc) - a to select all, and see if it gets picked up. If not, it's on a locked layer. Open the layer inspector and unlock that layer. You can also update via File->Document Setup... -> References. Click on the model there, and see if it highlights the model on your page, then click Update. Let me know if that helps.

b

We've mentioned as well: you can edit dimensions, so while it's painful and portrays more accuracy than you're actually measuring, you can double click on the text of a dimension and add the extra digit.

b

I'm not aware of any issues. Just tried it on my Mac File->Insert from SketchUp 6 file, and it was fine. Of course if an asteroid comes crashing into the earth because of this, well, let's hope it gets yours and my lawyers and leaves us alone...

b

That logo is on a shared layer, I think "On Every Inside Page". Windows->Layers and unlock that layer, and replace that logo with yours.

I think some of those are Window->Scrapbooks -> Trees (Plan) -> Retro.

To be clear, open the Scrapbooks inspector, select the scrapbook "Trees (Plan)", and go to the "Retro" page. Click on the tree and then click (multiple times if you want more than one tree) in your document to place it.

b

"every single action you can do in layout (even drawing a line) doubles the response time (or even more)" is a bit of an exaggeration, isn't it? Sure taking a large model, rendering it all the time on large paper, especially in LayOut 1, will be slow. But you couldn't turn off auto-rendering in LayOut 1, in addition to a lot of other updates.

If you haven't tried 2.1, it's come a long, long ways from LayOut 1.

b

Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't add today's announcement http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/making-search-more-musical.html and a link to http://www.google.com/search?&q=Dropkick+Murphys+State+of+Massachusetts

This update was issued 6 months ago, and I'm 99.9% sure that it's incorporated into Snow Leopard, which was released 2 months ago. If you have AppleCare, or it failed while you had AppleCare, then get them to replace it. If not, private message me and we can discuss this further... not sure that working around broken hardware is a good topic of general discussion.

b

Great find, driven. When you boot in safe mode, you're not loading your graphics card drivers, so all OpenGL commands are run in software, not on your graphics card. If you're into these things, you can look at http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KEXTConcept/KEXTConceptLoading/loading_kexts.html.

When a user was having a graphics card issue, I've mucked with some of this. You can modify which kernel extensions load in safe boot mode, so I can still load the graphics card drivers but disable other kernel extensions by editing the OSBundleRequired setting in the kernel extension.

Now just as they say when I watch "Nitro Circus" or "MythBusters" with my teen-age sons, DO NOT TRY THIS STUNT <break to "State of Massachusetts" by Dropkick Murphys>

b

A couple of comments:

baseLine, Gai's right: I'm not an architect, and my models and LayOut files are far lacking from some of the brilliant work of our customers. I'm not alone in that category, and it's that way with almost any software product. My goal would not be to limit the world to my level of talent in any field. We're not asking you to shut up. We're simply requesting that you try to be civil. Being cantankerous does not make you Steve Jobs or Leonard Bernstein. It's my fault that I read your post too quickly to see that you did your own line style from StyleBuilder. Let's move on.

honoluludesktop wrote:
I think that to represent otherwise is misleading, especially to student Architects.

I don't think we're representing this as the best package for all architects in all situations. Many SketchUp users aren't even architects. You can't assume that what's right for your situation is right for everyone. A couple of co-workers (who are architects) visited their grad school professors' classes this past week, and people are using SketchUp and LayOut in pretty good numbers. I think it'd be good for students to have a breadth of understanding of what's possible, then let them decide for themselves.

The prevailing thought seems to be "you guys fall short of what I want in a software package for my job". That's fine to express those thoughts, and we continue to try to improve. I think you should stop worrying that we're spraining our shoulders patting ourselves on the back.

b

Just another interesting tip: if you name your scenes in a standard way in SketchUp, then create a template in LayOut with a stand-in, simple model, but one that has the exact same scene names, when you take the model you want and Send to LayOut and choose that template, all your pages in that template will be populated with the correct scenes from your SketchUp model.

b

It's now closed. Thanks for posting this, Gai, and thanks for the feedback, all.

b

Um, I'll let Gai take care of this. Unless you write details out of what you're trying to do, I have to make assumptions in your case and try to provide answers. I could just come back at every request with more questions, but I tend to think it moves this process too slowly, so I'll take a stab at an answer with limited information. Even if it doesn't help you personally, immediately, this is a community forum and it may help someone else.

Man up? Hahahahaha....

b

Thanks. We appreciate suggestions. Quickly though (until noon today Mtn time, Oct 22, 2009) you can add them to SketchUp's suggestions at http://productideas.appspot.com/ (if they're LayOut related, put them under pro), or vote for ideas you like!

b

Aw, come on, baseLINE, you're not motivating me to help out here. You can crudely do most of this, keep it on a scrapbook and quickly reuse. There's different styles of drafting symbols in the TB- scrapbooks.

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 .

Work with me here, people.

b

Quit or hang? It's a good work flow to turn off rendering so you're not re-rendering every time you make a small adjustment. Of course, small paper, small models, you can do whatever you want and it'll probably work. But think about the size of things and the rendering you're doing if it's a complex model on large paper.

b