After loading LayOut 3, I placed all my templates from LayOut 2.1 into the the LO 3 template folder. The templates appeared in the template browser ok, but when I try to save, I get these two errors:

I then opened a 2.1 template in LO 3 like a file (as opposed to through the template browser). This seemed to work fine, and I was able to save ok. Until.. I was an hour or so into layout work, and I got the same two error messages again. After reverting back to the previously saved version, I was able to continue saving again.

Any thoughts on how I can avoid this? At most, I'd be exposed to losing all the work I can do in 5 minutes or whatever autosave interval I have set. But, I'd like to avoid it all together if possible.

I assume scrapbooks will have to be opened and saved as scrapbooks in a similar way (rather than just dumping my scrapbook files into the LO3 scrapbook folder).

Late notice, but I'm dropping by in a few minutes. See you there.

@thomthom said:

@jclements said:

What a great, basic tool.

Thanks, Jim.

It would be kind of cool if you could hook it into the Protractor Tool to make it interactive.

Yea - that's exactly what I had in mind. A click drag to define an angle displayed on sceeen as the protractor tool, and where you can use the VCB to input a specific angle.

... I'll add a third vote for this feature.

@bmike said:

yeah, kind of like that. Thanks, Mike.

..wasn't there a "hit head with board" smily face?

Thanks, Gaieus.

Perfect, thanks. I thought I had seen this before.

Now, does Drop need another plugin to work? (I'm starting from scratch on a fresh SU install). It doesn't seem to have created a menu object anywhere.

Thanks, all. Just when you think you've reviewed all the plugins out there...

Hi -

I've looked at a few plugins that place copies of a given component based on faces on an uneven surface. I'm trying to place a set number of components, at the exact z value where they would intersect with terrain imported from google earth.

I want to select all the instances of a component, and then select the google earth terrain, and then I want all the components' z coordinate to move to where they intersect with the terrain. Is there a plugin that will do this?

You can see in the screen shot that the individual faces of the terrain have no affect on the position or spacing of the components.

(In the second image, you can see that the component intersect is not at the physical boundary of the component. I can make the process work if I select the intersect point on the component, or if I set the intersect to the physical end of the component.)

This works great for ungrouped lines or faces. Is there a way to do this with groups and components?

Hi Jim -

Thanks for the response. I should have dug around a bit more before posting this question. Laziness, I'm afraid.

Up until now, I haven't needed to specify more than one position for copies generated using the COPIES function. I should have known, from the DC stairs I've seen, that you can specify PosX,PosY, and PosZ attributes for copies at the same time (and any other attribute, for that matter).

@jhearcht said:

Is there any way to Pan without using the mouse?

I use a 3d navigator from 3dconnexion.com. Even though the device can move through six degrees of motion at once, I usually use only 3, so I essentially pan and zoom with my left hand, and work the mouse with my right. It works for my specific workflow in sketchup, but I would imagine it could get troublesome if you use many different tools frequently.

Does anyone know if it's possible to set the PosZ value for component copies using the COPY function?

I don't believe you can link the presence of a user input option (the appearance of the option on the component options dialogue) to an "if" statement, or similar logic, using the native dynamic component capabilities.

You could, however, use "if" statements to control the output of the user's choices.

An example:

=IF(user_sink=true, user_trash=false, user_trash=true)

The idea is that user_sink and user_trash would be user-controlled variables. Would something like that work?

Hmm. I don't know if it was the same issue, but I've had something similar happen.

I had no subcomponents, and I had user input controlling the RotX and RotY attributes. I didn't have the RotZ attribute enabled in DC at all.

If the user rotated the DC about the Z axis (using the rotate tool, not the DC options box), the RotZ would always jump back to 0 upon redraw.

Is this similar to what you're experiencing?

I just read back over your posts. I should have picked up that you were looking for something other than a workaround. What did you end up doing?

Would something like this do the trick?

It is a workaround, and it may have some implication on how easy the DC is to configure for the end user.

What about being able to change the internal axis of a component? It seems like this changes the orientation of the bounding box as well. Does this have any consequence on your workflow?

@davidboulder said:

...I don’t want to have to go to components instead of groups unless I really have to.

Just out of curiosity, why do you want to use groups instead of components? I've been trying to set some standards for my own workflow of when to use a group vs. a component (beyond the obvious of having multiple instances of the same entity, or needing the internal reference axis of components).

Hi Mike -

Will the number of drawers change based on user input? I know this doesn't really get at your question of the DC behavior for component copies generated using the COPY function (I'm interested in that response, too).

If the DC will always have the same amount of drawers, I would suggest making them unique components from the beginning.

If the DC will have changing numbers of drawers, I would suggest creating the max possible drawers, each as a unique component, and hiding or revealing them based on user input. This option seems a little sloppy to me, as it would bother me to have a hidden drawer floating in space when it wasn't used.

Have you made any headway on getting unique control over the component copies?

If you're talking about Model Info > Units, that's where I have set the units I want.

Even if I have set the units to meters, the resulting report that's generated from File > Generate Report displays all the units in inches. Do you get a different result?