It was said a bit earlier, but I believe the feature upgrades to the new version of SketchUp were held off due to the (rightfully) assumed backlash of the new pricing models. My bet is that SketchUp will have some substantial upgrade in about the next 6 months after the weeping and gnashing of teeth of this release. John Bacus' post of "...we have to earn your business over and over again every day you are under subscription" enforces my assumption that Trimble was wise not to bundle good news with bad.

SketchUp, in my own personal philosophical sense, is a lot like me. I can think quickly and creatively at many different scales and represent an idea to someone else via a sketch or narrative (written or in person - with a lot of hand gestures!). The making of a 3D model is always easier for me in SketchUp, because at its core, it wants to keep things simple. I know of no other program that has a nearly intoxicating effect for presentations on clients and contractors alike. It is fine to point and grunt at some paper with 2D black and white plan diagrams, but open a SketchUp model and nearly everyone goes "Oh! Now I get it!" It has become my de facto tool for more than a decade that helps describe ideas to someone else. Still, to this day: it is transcendent.

When we continue to think that SketchUp should be anything and everything from a high-poly 3D modeller to a complete BIM package, then we reach a place of deviation from our different backgrounds, approaches and needs. "It can't do what you want, because I want it to do what I want!" That path leads to complication, unnecessary features, and bloat.

What I truly believe the solution will be is the interoperability of software and users. What I see happening in real-time 3D rendering programs is exciting. From Thea Render, Podium Walker to Lumion LiveSync, we are now at an age of easily linking a model to another program for a re-presentation of that idea. Take this a step further and we should be able to have SketchUp models link between other software for a real-time update/collaboration. From 2D CAD drawings, syncing to a more robust 3D/rendering package or just more "I" in BIM, SketchUp can become a bridge to add value to a working process, rather than another jeweled island in the sea of 3D. Combine this with having a model be accessible online and in any browser for the designers, consultants and clients to comment is fantastic. This is beyond BIM and having a project, at any scale, be a sort of wiki-based approach of hyperlinking thought with ease of delivery (desktop, laptop, tablet, phone, paper, etc...) is the future.

Apologize about the ramble, and I know I probably derailed this thread, but I am more hopeful than ever that we are more near an age of true sharing of ideas than ever before! But, before that happens, can we have just have LayOut link to .dwg files with correct line types?!

@iandefazio said:

I found a work around for this annoying issue.

X-Mouse Button Control > Scroll tab > Advanced Window Scrolling > Scroll Method = Method 1 > Vertical Lines = 8

Holy cow. Does that ever help! I would advise any PC user to take this advice and use it. It has made LayOut immediately more useful with this workaround. Hope the issue gets cleared up at Trimble, but until then, this will work just fine on my end.

Thank you, Ian!

I was only joking about the Intern part, JQL! Although I am not a regular contributor on this forum nearly as much as I used to be, I still read and learn from it almost daily. Your posts and insight, in particular, are more valuable than you give yourself credit for. I will think about the best approach on the possibility of resource and workflow sharing as my tiny office is taking on more work and I need to think about how I will want to get even better at what I do.

I would love to see or even start another conversation with other architects on how they use SketchUp and LayOut in their personal workflows. The closest that I have seen the promised land was from Nick Sonder, Matt Donely and Mike Brightman. The approaches are somewhat similar, although Mike’s team developed plugins specifically built for documentation in LayOut.

I found both books, plugins and investigations fulfilling and worthwhile, but I have gravitated back to more of a hybrid Nick Sonder approach, as I still find it easier to iterate and share plan work in CAD but utilize LayOut more and more as it is becoming a better end-to-end solution with SketchUp.

Maybe we can get a small band of Sketchucationers together to share a Google Drive folder of projects, templates and workflow examples? I would be willing to share with a select few the things that I know work and the things I struggle with that could use some enlightenment. Or, just fly me to Europe and I will be an architectural intern for you, JQL. You wouldn’t mind a 40+ year old student, right?

@jql said:

There's a recurrent story here about a studio that delivered the renders of a preliminary version and the full CD of the final version. They built the rendered output and disregarded the CD's.

And therein lies the problem. The CDs are contract, but the renders are infused design descriptions. Unless both are referenced or linked to one another dynamically then architects open themselves up to errors and omissions. This is where BIM makes sense. The difficult part, especially for me, is navigating the strict nature of BIM implementation versus the flexibility and speed of SketchUp.

And yes, I have followed so many approaches to utilizing SketchUp and LayOut as another method of crossing this divide, but I continue to find that most of the time, the client and contractors constantly refer back to a 3D view.

The hope is to have LayOut become more of integral part of SketchUp and not so much what I think it is now, which in my opinion is a bit too slow and precarious as compared to its older sibling.

I would really like to see that thread, JQL. Do you mind linking it in this conversation?

Most of this is from my own practices and experiences, but I have found that many of the architects I have been either taught by or apprenticed under had an infatuation with the re-presentaion of architecture. The product was not the actual construction, but the delivery of the idea...the drawing. Line weight, scale, complexity distilled into a perfect diagram took an enormous amount of time to create. But, when this was complete, you were left with a sense that you understood the project more fully. I am absolutely infatuated with the representation of an idea as built form and have spent the better half of my career seeking out how to make it better, more legible and, well, beautiful. I love a great set of CDs!

The problem with this line of thinking is leaving out the other players in the project, namely the client and the contractor. In both of these cases (again from my own experience) they have utilized less of the time-consuming "beautiful" drawings and instructions that I spent a certain amount of time to create and opted for more of a schematic approach of 3D representation. Why? Well, SketchUp has become somewhat of a Rosetta Stone for design professionals, clients and stakeholders and the guys actually swinging the hammers. You can get an immediate response from the friendly face of a SketchUp model. I have never experienced this form of openness in any other software, and believe me, I have tried them all.

I find that the diagrammatic portion of architecture (plans, sections and details) are still absolutely essential not only for quick design iteration, but documenting and describing space to a client and construction to a contractor. The more pictorial parts of a project are getting less formal for me (exterior elevations, interior elevations, assemblies) and I find that more can be garnered from the textured 3D perspective with dimensions and annotations than anything that I have completed previously with 2D CAD.

Again, I am not trying to be Yoda and burn architecture and it's sacred methodologies of representation to the ground, but thoughtfully considering what is really used and not confused during a design presentation, on a review board and on the jobsite.

I love a good dialogue. Thanks for the critical responses, and YES, I loved The Last Jedi.

Eric

Just a quick question on the evolution of the way you all have been describing projects recently.

I have had more than a few contractors make comments and take better instruction off of a SketchUp + LayOut 3D perspective with dimensions and notes, rather than creating a more standard set of flat Interior Elevations. This got me thinking (or rethinking) the entirety of how to continue to make better work and represent it to get built with less mistakes or RFIs.

What purpose do Interior Elevations serve more than to describe basic heights and spacing of elements as well as a place to show finishes? Can't this be better served with more color 3D perspectives with call-outs of critical heights and alignments that show real materials?

I am not trying to do away with them, but wondering what the next evolution of how best to represent ideas to someone without creating more work that could more easily be shown and updated as the project evolves.

Any and all comments welcome!

Got it to work. Thanks, TIG!

@tig said:

You can use some simple 'one-liners' in the Ruby Console...
I'll explain the parts, then assemble them into a single line you can copy/paste into the Ruby Console, editing the component name 'cn'...
You need to manually make the layer and assign the selected component instances to it...
That process could also be included if you like...

cn="^Wall"

the component-definition's name pattern.

note that "Wall" selects just wall, "^Wall" selects all starting with Wall, "^[Ww]all" includes those starting with upper and lower-case W, "^Wall[0-9]" limits it to those named Wall + a number 0 to 9 [and anything following]. To end a pattern use a final $ - so "^Wall[0-9]$" would NOT then match "Wall01" !

Edit this string to suit your needs...

m=Sketchup.active_model
ss=m.selection
ss.clear
as=m.active_entities
cs=as.grep(Sketchup::ComponentInstance).find_all{|e|e.definition.name=~/#{cn}/}
ss.add(cs)

And in just one line:

cn="^Wall";m=Sketchup.active_model;ss=m.selection;ss.clear;as=m.active_entities;cs=as.grep(Sketchup;;ComponentInstance).find_all{|e|e.definition.name=~/#{cn}/};ss.add(cs)

juju: Nope. I usually only use Groups, Components that track to Layers. Outliner is still pretty unused in my workflow (for now).

TIG: Thanks so much, man! I will try to get around to doing what you are suggesting a little later today and report back. I really appreciate the guidance!

Hello!

I have tried a few searches on this forum...but I still can't find...what I'm lookin' for. Hopefully you all can point me in the right direction.

So, another model has been constructed and exported as a 3DS file and then imported into SketchUp. The import is fairley clean, but I would like to have a quick way to select objects in the new SketchUp model for putting them on my standard layers.

Is there a plugin like Selection Toys that allows you to select entities with a certain definition name? i.e. - I have many object called "Wall01, Wall02, Wall03..." is there a way of quickly selecting all of the items just called "Wall" to change to a particular layer?

Thanks for any and all help.

Cheers!

I really do think LayOut is close to becoming a better idea of what BIM could be for many architects and design professionals. The other side of it that makes me more interested is it can become what BIM isn't: for everybody else that has a great idea and wants to communicate it easily. But to do that, LayOut seriously needs to embrace itself as a drafting program and the ability to draw to real a scale inside of the program, copy/paste back into a SketchUp model and continue to get as fast and easy to use as it's big brother.

I have utilized LayOut more and more in my daily practice with the help of Nick Sonder and Mike Birghtman's approaches. I see these methods of thinking about developing design (not just architecture) as a workflow from SketchUp to LayOut that fits more accurately in a true design process (i.e. You don't have to know everything you want in a design prior to starting- discovery and "happy accidents" abound.)

I really do hope Trimble understands this and continues to tie SketchUp and LayOut together in a fluid way so much that they are two sides of the same coin, rather than separate entities. Together with an ability to connect information on the web with components in models, sharing information as a project database with Trimble Connect and pushing the client use of incorporating models into a VR or AR delivery is exciting.

Anyway, here's to hoping, y'all!

Eric

Some of these are pretty great! I didn't have any idea you could assign a texture in SketchUp layers. Switching from Shaded With Textures to Hidden Line + Color By Layer you can have two ways of describing a surface. Very cool for representing a realistic material along with a traditional hatch!

Looks like this might be in the next D'oh! book. Right, Rich?

@jql said:

@kyeric said:

@JQL
...

I've been using LO and as I don't look at that the same way. Nothing beats the relationship you get with your actual model. It can be cumbersome when many details are envolved, but, sincerelly LO might become faster than CAD on your workflow.

I'd say this with total assurance:

• Layout will help your docs be more pretty or, if that doesn't matter to you, more readable;
• Layout will help you reduce mistakes by having a continued link with your model;
• Layout might be slower to work than CAD but you must work much less with it than you have to work if you choose to integrate CAD in your workflow.
• Layout is capable of much more, but it's not standard and it has a steep learning curve, not in the software, but in the workflow;
• This learning curve, might be questionable nowadays as Sonder's book, wich I haven't read, seems to be promising for people thinking like you do.

I could, of course, be wrong, but I'm telling you all that even if I don't like working with Layout as I don't feel it's intuitive or fun...

Exactly my hope. I understand that most of the time, it isn't the software nor the developers that needs to change...it's us.

@pbacot

Yes, I see that kind of workflow is a lot like mine at the present. It is a cobbled effort, for sure and I am finding that the time invested in going to a more SketchUp-Layout centric methodology works a lot better, though I do struggle mightily at times.

@JQL

Your question just reiterates my original question. CAD, at the moment is the fastest way to put an established, industry standard visual communication device to the world. Yes, you can build things faster in SU (or your choice of BIM software), but the way we must translate that visual information back into an accepted standard is slower. Maybe it's just my age or experience, but CAD is just a necessary evil that I must account for on nearly every project.

I am honestly hoping to alleviate much of this through the continued tweaking of how I practice and represent an idea of the built environment.

Appreciate the comments and look forward to anyone else wanting to chime in.

Cheers

@pbacot said:

Definitely have gone to using more SU-LO for exterior elevations plus the 3d presentations. It allows me actually be able to do the 3d work exterior for projects where, before, rendering would not have been feasible. Plans, as you say, are more diagrammatic and full of symbols. Plans and sections are rapidly updated in CAD during design development where notes and symbols reflect the detail of information at each stage. The exterior skin and the inside (plan and section) follow different paths for me at present.

Yes! This is more of the hybrid approach that I usually fall back on, as no other program can make an elevation as information rich (and beautiful) as SU-LO. I have seen many examples on this forum that truly make me excited to try and replicate it in my own workflow. Plans, sections, details, schedules are just usually more expedited in CAD. I hate that the 3D model becomes separated from those other drawings but it becomes old hat to utilize CAD as a digital pen, replete with easy control of making lines, offsetting, copying, etc. all with a nice line weights.

I would love to know how you combine your own hybrid CAD/SU-LO drawings? Do you have (2) separate titleblocks that match in CAD and LO? This is very interesting and might help me stem the tide of my own work till I can be totally on SketchUp and LayOut...someday.

Until then, I really hope the next major release of LayOut gets some major love from the Trimble Troops!

@jql said:

The question is interesting enough. 2D drawings have the advantage of being easy to measure as all measurements are scaled.

I don't think they can be replaced, specially plans but sections and elevations too.

However, they can be used as a complement of an higher level of information too if you find ways of using your 3d.

What I do in a standard basis is:

• Develop a 3D for every communication with client and help on construction site;
• Use Layout for Plans, Sections and Elevations for permits and construction documents, in a pretty standard fashion all the way to 2D details.
• I rarelly use 3D details, but my models are fully modelled in their visible parts and also on their most complex parts so I can use that 3D info for whatever is required in terms of construction comprehension and there's nothing stopping me from delivering the 3D model to construction site.

I don't think reinventing the wheel is needed most of the times, but I do think there are very interesting stuff you can do with a 3D to communicate your ideas and it's very interesting to have a full 3D as a design process.

Appreciate the reply, JQL. I am enamored in breaking through towards a more SU-LO centric workflow and am encouraged to see that others have really found better ways of doing just that. I agree that plans are very diagrammatic but absolutely standard in building and construction communication, but trying to get SU and LO to do what CAD can crank out in a short amount of time is my biggest obstacle.

I concede that the SketchUp model always beats a CAD drawing in either the office, with the client or a contractor. I am just interested in how best to streamline a way to get all of that lovely information back into a translatable "standard" visual format, but as Nick and other gurus here have shown, maybe the way we represent our designs must change.

Fast and flexible is key in a small practice, too. Still honing the workflow, but I am happy to report that I have not jumped from CAD to Revit. Too much for my small brain to handle.

Hello!

I have been reflecting lately (as I have a lot since turning 40) on the idea of architecture as design and implementation. I have been using SketchUp for about 13(!) years in some form or fashion and in my growth as a practicing architect and designer I have always fallen back on the trusty, intuitive tools that SketchUp has to offer. My nature is to continue to investigate many a new whiz-bang technology that preaches BIM capability, but I continually find those types of methods too cumbersome and...well, let's face it: not fun.

As I have circled back around again to a more concise SketchUp and LayOut lifestyle thanks heavily in part to Nick Sonder, Mike Donley and Mike Brightman (you all rock!) I am wanting to ask not what would be the next great feature release of SketchUp and LayOut, but what experience does this community have with moving away from the traditional CAD plans/elevations/sections/details and into a more inclusive 3D representation of a design?

I still think this is such an interesting subject as plans and sections tend to rely heavily on being diagrammatic and representative, where elevations land more on becoming pictorial. Utilizing some of the methods of Nick and Mike in SketchUp and LayOut, I have found that making all of the 3D information becomes bogged back down in translation back into a more standard graphic standard format. I am hoping to hear some of this community's experience dealing with breaking away form an architect's conception of graphic standards to how an owner or contractor relate directly to visual communication in 3D? How do you all make a new standard?

No wrong answers here, just appreciation of not only this wonderful software, but the users that make it sing.

Cheers!

Matt and Nick,

I have to say how impressed I am with the amount of love and attention that has gone into this publication. Excellent workflow and I am seriously excited to implement it into my own practice.

I highly recommend this to anyone sitting on the fence. It already answers many questions on how to think about the SketchUp to LayOut differently than any CAD (or even BIM) system. I believe this has the ability to get traction more and more in architectural design and other disciplines to continue to move away from either an antiquated methodology (CAD) or cumbersome pragmatic system (BIM) and back towards a simpler design process.

Great work.

Cheers,
Eric

Great suggestions! I have really tried to use Layout as more than a design development tool, but usually fall back on the speed and efficiency of a regular CAD package for construction documentation and details. I agree that it is not a lot of fun, but I can't argue with expedience.

I am just wondering if there is any other CAD package that has the ability to dynamically link a SU model? I have heard SPIRIT did this years ago, but I can't tell if this is a possibility.

My real desire is not to relearn a new program because as I see the growth and development of Layout, I realize that it is a matter of time to have the core functionalities that make CAD hard to finally put on a dusty shelf for good. I would love to see the functionality of DoubleCAD that could import SU models in a much more stable environment for further documentation and delivery.

Thanks again for the conversation, I always appreciate the input.