I've been using sketchup for ~8 years now.
There is one instance where I would particularly like to be able to temporarily shut off inferencing along axes and lines.
Drawing contours.
If there's a way to do it, like maybe press 'Shift-down arrow' while drawing a line and axis-line-point snapping shuts down for the duration of the draw line command, that would be perfect.
in Layout? as far as I know plugins are not accessible in Layout.
Right now control of styles in Layout is very limited. Also it seems like it gets confused when you modify the referenced file sometimes but that's another issue. We should be able to create new styles/ edit style settings/ delete styles within Layout.
You can kind of do this with the knife tool by splitting the line, dragging one of the new vertices at the split, connecting with a new line segment and the dragging the vertice back so they merge, then drag the new single vertice where you want, but that's a lot of steps and you must do it for each vertice you want to add or draw a new polyline
I did a drawing set a while back with hatches using Layout's Patterns and it looked good, but the guy I was working with and the print shop were both unable to open the pdf to print or even look at it. They would take a long time to open on my computer. I think the way the patterns are saved into printed pdfs must not be optimal for hatching drawings and needs work.
Vectors would be nice but as Kaas points out, this would be so much better as a Sketchup feature; assign a .pat to a solid group and the pat magically appears in the section cut, kind of like what Skalp does.
Not concerned about objects getting out of order, not concerned with objects that are being moved. Merely concerned with 'altering' unique objects that must change shape to fit each other. E.g. "whoops we're 2' outside the zoning envelope, let's move everything back 2' from column line 'B'" Moving the columns is easy. But each floor, partition, wall, storefront group etc. must be opened and edited separately as necessary, moving only the faces which need to move, using an 'area select' and 'move' within each group. Just want to do this in one step. I bet if this were easy to do as a plugin it would have been done already.
Slimdog, yes, you've got it, thanks. However the scale tool is not a replacement because if your geometry is anything more than an extruded profile (say, a 5 1/2" thick wall) that you are scaling only in the direction of extrusion without any holes or niches, you will end up with distorted profile.
Bjoraka, I think I make the best of layers, groups and components in sketchup that I can and it is nothing like how I model in other programs, and I like that. Been using Sketchup for ~4 years. I don't mean to say it's impossible, just time consuming to go through everything and adjust each group affected by the shifted area even with proper naming once you have a fairly well developed model. It's a wish. To be able to select the desired edges from groups that fall within an area selection and then use the move tool on them.
I see what you are talking about, one edit inside one component instance changes all other instances of that component, but that's not what I'm referring to.
Say you have some furniture, windows and doors in your model that are instances of components and that works fine. Now let's say those windows are in unique groups of walls for each floor, each floor and the roof is a group, and maybe you have some other groups for things like railings, storefront, and foundations. Now let's say you want to shift a bearing wall from foundation to floor 2' to the left [and simultaneously transform all "objects" affected by the alteration]. In a typical 3d modeler, you just area select from a top view by edges or points and move everything 2' to the left. In Sketchup you must go into each group and make the transformation individually.
Edit geometry simultaneously across groups the way you edit points, edges, polys in a typical solid modeler (as if the groups were objects)
Maybe there's some plugin like this that already exists, but I couldn't find it in searching. Would be nice when you've created a complex model with lots of groups and need to shift a volume, to be able to select all the edges/polys in that area from all groups intersecting that area and adjust those edges.
Current implementation, you have to go into each group and make the adjustment individually. This is a one step process in most any other modelling program, and depending on model complexity a nightmare in Sketchup.