Erps, I was going to include a picture:

You can. The extending of the line beyond the inference point is an End Arrow style. You can type in a higher pt value (typicall 2 pt or 5 pt by default), and up it to something bigger, like 30 pt. Click on the dimension, double click to edit it, then click on one side to adjust it.

Once you've adjust one dimension the way you want it, you can select all the others, type "s" (one shot sample tool), and click on your fixed dimension, and voila, all are fixed. You may want to put style things like this dimension in a scrapbook, and you can sample that scrapbook for updates to your other pages and files.

Hope that helps.

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FYI to others (sent this to Red): Most of the time you can select the items that get the same fonts, and use the one-shot (type "s") sampler to change all of them. Or select all and use the font panel. In his model's case, I thought I knew why it wasn't changing all, but that was in error. I'm still trying to understand it. When I figure it out, I'll post.

The issue was Red was using a font that I don't have on my system, which would be fine normally, but I wanted to make sure all models were rendered properly, so after opening the file on my system, I re-rendered all models and saved the file. That saving now gave him my font substitution for the missing font.

I e-mailed Red, and I can fix that for him.

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A layer could disappear because something is in front of it, or if the layer inspector is hidden (the little eye in the Layers inspector). Things are also drawn in order on each layer, so right clicking items on a layer, you can "Arrange->" and move forward or backward in the drawing order. Also, if you group items on different layers, it will bring them to the front-most layer. If you select an entity, you'll see a little blue dot in the layers inspector to indicate what layer it's on.

Keep posting questions, because I'm sure there are other newbies that don't know but don't ask.

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As I mentioned in an earlier thread, I turn on grid and grid snap, but then draw everything to the same scale, whatever that may be, then scale up or down by selecting all, holding shift (to keep aspect ratio constant), and type the exact scale up or down that I want. If that's not clear, I'll draw a picture. However, what I draw is not nearly as nice or complex as what you draw, I'm quite sure.

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The red x is typically when a resource can't be loaded. In early days, this was a stand-in for lacking memory resources on large documents... did you get this resolved? If not, PM me.

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ps - sorry, my replies have been slow. I lost my reader feed and didn't see these posts.

For quick scale things, I turn on grid, use grid snap, and draw a dimension to a rough scale I want (typically 1" = 1'). Then draw something. If the scale isn't exactly what I want, I select all, hold down shift (to keep aspect ratio constant), scale, then type the exact scale I want, e.g. I draw a 3",6" rectangle to represent a 30'x60" floor plan, but I want that scaled, so I scale, and type 1.25,1.25 to get a 36'x72' floor plan.

If this of great interest, it would be a reasonable feature request to have VCB, er, measurement box input be scaled, so if I drew a rectangle and then typed 3",6" to get a 3" by 6" rectangle, but figured it was 1" = 1', to directly be able to type 30',60' and have it scaled for me. Is that what you're looking for?

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You can have more than one window open: Window->New Window for Page blah.

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OK, I'll try to explain. First, we always keep an embedded version in the file. From our testing, it would be too big of a surprise if you gave the file to someone and since they didn't have the ref that the file wouldn't work. We use the external file though, unless you unlink it.

Purge, Embedded, Missing:

Missing:
In the case of your CasaTranquillo model, it's lost the file locator, so simply use the Relink button and go find it.

Purge:
Purge the unused resources in your file. Sometimes I'll get files from people with 3 models in them, but their layout document is only using one of them. Purge to get rid of unused things.

Embedded:
You're now using the model embedded in the LayOut (zip) file, not the one on the file system that you originally inserted. The only way to edit this file is to right click on it and "Open in SketchUp". This generally is NOT the way people work, but you can do it.

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Nope, you're not missing anything - it's how it's implemented for now (that's my wimpy way of saying it's technically not a bug). In SketchUp if you double click the group then select a drawing tool, it will add that geometry to the group. LayOut doesn't do that. For now, you'll have to ungroup, draw, regroup. As drawing in LayOut gets more sophisticated, I'm sure we'll look into implementing more of the SketchUp way in the future.

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If your title block did not carry over, and you think it was drawn on a shared layer, then it's probably drawn on the wrong layer. You can tell what layer something is drawn on by selecting it (your title block) and seeing which layer the little blue dot shows up in the layers inspector.

1. Thanks. We have this on our feature request list (move), and selecting should work like SketchUp with lower right to upper left selecting anything included in bounding box, and upper right to lower left selecting only things completely in bounding box. If that's not working, it's a bug. You should be able to zoom in and click on the line to select, then move, and type a paper space move distance in the VCB, er, measurements box. I often select sloppily then shift click on the things I don't want in my selection.

2. You can group things - command/alt - shift - g or Edit->Group should do it. Then double click to edit the items within the group. These can be nested as well (group in a group in a group etc...).

3 - 5 Feature request we get. We'll +1 to the requests.

6. LOL - me, too. I usually wait to get coffee or go to the bathroom at times like that.

Thanks for the feedback.

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OK, I'll try to explain layers. First, have the capability to have layers across multiple pages, they can't be page-based - they need to be document based. Think of the "eye" icon (visible) being disabled as removing that layer from that page. It's not visible so it plays no roll in that page.

Second, layers are for drawing order. Within each layer, you can define what gets drawn in front or in the back, or the order in between front and back by right-clicking on an entity or using the Arrange menu to set the order. The order of the layers (top to bottom, top being drawn on top and the last one being drawn furthest back) sets the order of drawing within the layers.

When you lock a layer, it can no longer be edited. This is handy to have things that might get selected and nudged (like precise line locations drawn over a 3D view of a model to emphasize certain points) to stay in place and not be selectable.

You can duplicate a page by clicking Pages->Duplicate.

And yes, if you create a layer "Notes on Site Plan", you can make it visible on the Site Plan page, but not show up (click the eye icon in the layers page) for the other pages. Layer visibility is set on a per page basis.

Did that help?

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For more on using SketchUp Pro for construction documents, see the heavy traffic on http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=15911

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Well, you could draw a scale in SketchUp, send to LayOut and make it Ortho with a scale (I chose 1" = 1', but this can be changed), vector render the model, add text labels in LayOut, and save as a Scrapbook called Scales.layout. That's what I did.

Of course, you can create a prettier scale drawing, pick a better font, etc..

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Scale.layout

It happens on Mac as well.

Engineers are looking at it, but they're busy and we'll get back to you. In the interim, you can work around it as Jeff suggested, render in hybrid, or draw the line slightly offset from the face. It's really a SketchUp issue, not a LayOut issue, as you'll see the same issue on PDF export in SketchUp. In LayOut, we're looking at why hybrid and vector differ. Thanks, matteo & Todd for helping with this.

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Is this Todd's script: http://www.smustard.com/script/DashedLines ? If so, I'll contact Todd and see if we can test it.

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What happens if you kill it? Does it always do this?

You should unlock the locked layers when you edit the scrapbook. Make sure you saved it with permissions (Windows, Mac OS X) that allow you to edit it.

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Start here:

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=20687&p=173912&hilit=scrapbook+electrical#p173912

and we'll ask for others.

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