Posts made by holdenc

Another option may be, since you're on a Mac, Print to a pdf.

I think we're talking about pretty much the same thing. As I see it, Layout is going to get the information from SketchUp in any case. Dynamic linking is critical.

What I'm proposing is that the predefined filters, or hopefully user defined filters, you mention can live in a graphic tag with linking power similar to the Label tool. I would like to decide which components are going to be made available to the schedule by labeling them rather than deleting them out of the table. I like to be able to look at the drawing to see the things I've done and find the things I've missed.

My suggestion comes from generating drawings out of Inventor and SolidWorks. After laying out your parts in an assembly drawing, you label them with an automatic balloon tool. Then you can generate a quick BOM of everything with a balloon number attached. Often you are only labeling a sub-assembly and ignoring the majority of the parts in the assembly.

AutCad also has a powerful attribute and table system. You can add hidden attributes to any block but often the most efficient thing to do is make tag blocks and copy and paste them around the drawing. You can tell the table wizard to show you only blocks with attributes, then select only those you want to put in the table.

I have to generate long schedules in table format -- not just doors and windows but all the fixtures and furniture in an existing building for as-builts. The standard is to label the objects in the floor plan with a numbered tag. Then you can go look up the number in the table to find out what the object is and how many of them there are in the plan, e.g.
Tag ID-1, Count-4, Item-Door, Type-Right Hand, Size-2'-6", etc.

Now we have custom attributes in components which can be auto-loaded into Labels -- which is GREAT! But too many labels clutter the drawing and I still have to get my table from SketchUp using Generate Report, edit it in another program and insert it into Layout -- which breaks dynamic linking and updating.

SO, what I want are labels in Layout that look like tags. Let's call them Report Tags. They could be labeled themselves and exported to a table, along with the attribute text of the dynamic component they are attached to. In other words, it's a little piece of Layout geometry and text that serves to select a component so that its attributes can be reported out, similar to the way you can generate a report of selected components in SketchUp. Non-tagged components don't get reported.

Report Tags could live in a sub-menu as options under the label tool. Choose the type of Report Tag (Circle, Hex, Rectangle) then click on a component, click again to define an arrow, or maybe right click to define NO arrow, and type in the Tag ID. Copy that Tag to other copies of that component. (Maybe the Tag ID lives in the component attributes, but this would mean going back to SketchUP if you had to change an ID for some reason.)

Or maybe even better, they could live as a type of Auto-Text that could be inserted into tag geometry in the Scrapbook. Drag them out to a component and Auto-Text asks you for a Tag ID.

When everything is tagged, go to the new Layout>Generate Report command, or maybe the new Table Tool and define which attributes to include and how they are arranged.

For a long time people have been hiding 2d geometry, like tags, in their 3d components so their construction documents look correct. But with the new access to attributes it seems we might be getting closer to the day that SketchUP is all about 3d and Layout takes care of all the 2d chores.

Thanks Trevor,

Still don't know why it happened but I figured out the fix in any case. The small window open in the png is the window that opens when the ReLink button is pushed.

I just had to navigate back to the original SU file inside that ReLink window. I was afraid to do that since those reference files are inside several layers of double secretly coded folders with indecipherable names. Now I just have to fix all my dimensions in Layout.

Charlie

Got a Layout file to the point that the boss could check the dimensions. So I sent him a pdf, saved everything and went to lunch -- (computer went to sleep).

After a few hours he got back with a few changes, which I made in SU and saved.

Changes do not show up in Layout after Right Click updating reference. Resaved, no change; Restarted SU and Layout, no change; added new geometry to SU, resaved, no change.

In Layout -- File/Document Setup/References I tried to update reference but no joy. Tried to ReLink to the SU file and I can see that the only files available were last saved at 12:11. All more recent saves are greyed out and listed as Engineering Style.

So it seems that this reference file is not being updated when SU saves.

How do I either get SU to link back to this ref file and make a real update or work back out from Layout and find my original SU file and link to it.

Thanks everybody.

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I've done this only a couple of times so I'm no expert. I think push-pull takes too long to calculate the face with that many edges.

What worked for me was to break the closed entities so that they are just lines. Import the Cad file as a flat drawing. Use control-select to select all the individual segments of one line then the move tool to move each contour line vertically to the correct elevation. (I don't know if topography from contours will work if each contour line is made a group, but grouping them makes them easy to move and select. You could make them each a group, move them then ungroup them I guess.) In any case, "from contours" will work from open lines once they are at the right elevations.