Hey, guys, this is Aaron. Last video we looked at using SketchUp to create scenes and styles
to prep a model to go to LayOut. So, today we are going to take those scenes and use them to
create viewports in LayOut. Not much more to talk about here. We're just going to do that. Nope,
one more thing we're going to cover, this video is not meant to be a comprehensive training on
LayOut. What I really want to look at is the process of using those scenes we created to set
up viewports in LayOut. That's kind of the goal of what we're going to do here. We're not going
to get into a bunch of other stuff; setting up pages, putting dimensions and stuff on
top of your drawings. That stuff we can do in a different video. This one I really want to focus
on creating those viewports from those scenes, which is kind of core to getting a good LayOut
file and working with a SketchUp model there. So, with that, we're just going to hop right into it.
Alright. Here we go. We have the file we looked at last time. The same scenes we set up before. So,
I'm going to hop right over into LayOut. I'm going to go "File" and "Insert" that SketchUp file. Now,
some people will probably ask why I didn't just use the "send to LayOut" command. You could
absolutely do that. This is something I tend to do is click "Insert" and draw my viewport
manually. If you want to use "send to LayOut" to send it over, that's great. There's nothing
wrong with doing it that way. I'm just doing it a different way. I'm going to go ahead and grab my
house for LayOut, and that's going to throw the last saved view. The last view I created - the
last scene I created - was my second floor section. So, that is the one that shows up. So,
what I'm going to do right here - I'm going to create a page, my first page right here - I'm
going to create four views; my front, back, left, and right views. I want to create four viewports.
The first thing I'm going to do with this first viewport I created is right-click, go to "Scenes",
and tell it I want to make the "Front" view. That is going to set that scene exactly how I
had it back in SketchUp. Now, as a default, it is going to bring this in at the current scale,
whatever fits good in this viewport. So, what I'm going to do is - if I'm making some actual,
usable construction drawings and things or working drawings - then I'm going to want these
to actually be to a scale. So, let's see what 1/8 inch equals 1 foot. What does that look like?
Yeah, I think I could fit that onto this page. So, I'll keep that at 1/8 inch equals 1 foot. Then,
I'm just going to scale down this viewport. You'll notice that, as I resize by grabbing the handles,
it's not resizing anything. Because I have "preserve scale" on here, it's going to basically
crop. I'm going to grab that and hold down the option key - or control on windows - and I'm going
to drag a copy straight down. You can see I have that green axis there. I don't have to worry about
snapping or anything. As I move close to vertical, it is going to snap along that green axis.
Alright, I'm going to right-click on this one now, and I'm going to my scenes and tell it to show the
back. That is going to flip it right around. Now, because I didn't worry too much about lining my
views up, I just snapped those views, I'm going to see things like this - where it ended up kind
of off the page here. There are a couple of things I could do. One, I could just come in here, and,
just like I did in that top view - go like that, slide it over this way. I could do that sort of
thing. I am actually going to go up to this and slide it up. And do that sort of thing to get
it lined up. That works pretty well. I'm going to take this one now. I'm going to hit option again,
slide it over another time. I'm going to overlap a little bit. That's okay because
I'm going to change it. Right-click, and down here in the lower right-hand corner,
let's go show our right side. I can bring this back this way. Another option, if I want to slide
that over is to, of course, double-click to take me into the viewport. From here,
I can right-click and use things like "hand." Now, as soon as I come in here, you notice that
"preserve on rescale" is turned off. It went and rescaled it to whatever it was because I changed
the view. I am no longer in that same scene. If I come here to my scene, go back to my right view,
it's going to give me that. It's going to give me the view that is scaled inside of there. So,
I'm going to go back to 1/8 inch and I'm going to "preserve" and I'm going to use my handles.
There we go. "Preserve" is going to put me in that "crop" mode rather than resizing the
viewport. Not a big deal. This is something that should seem like, as we look at this right now,
you should be getting a feeling that maybe there's an easier way. I have to come clean. This is a
trainers trick. You show the way that is not easy to do first, and then you happen to come upon a
way to make it easier in the next step. So, we're going to do that. I'm going to - just to finish
this out - come straight up here, I'm going to switch this around to my "Left" view. Quick crop.
Okay, so maybe something like that to get my views on there. So, that wasn't ideal. I had to
do a lot of moving stuff around. I had to really get things set up in ways like a lot of cropping,
a lot of moving things around. There has got to be a simpler way, right? Yes, fortunately,
there is. I'm going to go ahead and add a new page. Rather than importing it again,
I'm just going to back to this first page, grab this viewport right here, right click and "Copy".
Hop over here to page 2, right click, and "paste." That will just throw that right on here exactly as
it was in the last page. Now, what I want to do is make a page with 2 different - my two Plan
Bs - so, my first floor and my second floor. Right click on this one. I'm going to go to my scenes,
and click on my first floor. So, initially I will have to adjust my viewport so it shows the portion
of the building that I want to see. That looks good. I don't need all of that driveway visible,
I can close that up a little bit. Alright, that looks pretty good. For this example,
I really want to have both of these pictures side by side on one page. So, while this is 1/8 in,
which is probably what I would want to put out. If I were making a drawing of this, I'd put this in
the middle with a title bar over here. But, for this example, I'm going to make it a little bit
smaller so I can see my two floors side by side. I'm going to drop that down to 1/16 inch equals 1
foot. That will give me a smaller, but still very usable, size there. I'm just going to crop that
back down. Looks good. So, what I want to do now is, right next to this, I want to put the second
floor - maybe right below it. We'll just go one above the other. So I'm going to click, again,
like I did before, use the modifier key, option or control. Drag a copy straight down. I'm going to
right-click, and I'm going to go to "Scenes" and choose my second floor. What? Alright, I thought
that was going to be simple. Turns out it wasn't. This is another one of those trainer tricks where
I'm acting like I don't know what is going on. Anyhow, the issue here is that when I created
these two scenes, I slightly moved the model, intentionally or unintentionally. So, in order
for this to line up right now, I'd have to go re-crop, just like I did before. Drag this over,
drag this down, drag this in and then line it up using snaps, but we're not going to do that. We're
going to look at what we could do with this model right now to automatically line these two drawings
up, so that this is straight above this. So if I was putting this on a grid line or something like
that, it would line up. If I wanted to overlay, if I wanted it on top of the first floor, they
would line up. Right now, obviously, if I tried to do any of that, everything's going to be off. So,
what I'm going to do is "Save" this, and I'm going to hop back into my SketchUp model, which I happen
to still have open. This isn't required. I don't have to have this open all the time. I do happen
to have this open right now, though. If I click through these just to look through what we were
seeing before, look at how far that shifts. So, when I save this scene, it's saving the
entire view of the window. You can see how, when it dropped that into those skinny, rectangular
viewports, I had to do a lot of cropping and moving stuff around to get everything to line
up. See how the center of the building is on the left side here, and when I flip to the right view,
it's over on the right. That's something I may want to consider. As I'm making my views here,
what I could do is use my "hand" tool, my "Pan" tool, to bring this back and put it in the center;
so the house is in the center, and not the whole model. At that point, I could update that scene.
Same thing with the front to back. When I look at the front, I am a little off-center,
I might take this and slide it over a little bit and update that. Then, same thing with my back.
Rather than having the bulk of it this way, I could bring it back this way a little bit,
center it more vertically, and then update that. That's not going to be perfect. I'm not going to
see an exact, perfect line up on that, but that is because I'm looking at the house from a different
view. With something like this, with my first and second floor, I should be able to line that up
so it is exact. I'm going to do this by using one floor as a template and putting that view onto the
other. So, what I'm going to do is go to my first floor, I'm going to pan that exactly where I want
it. Get that right about in the middle. Again, you don't need all of the dry ware and that.
That looks good, so I'm going to update that. Now, before I click to the second floor, because if I
click the second floor, it's going to jump back to this view, right here where it is panned
over - So, on my first floor, what I'm going to do is go into my "Outliner", I'm going to scroll all
the way down to my "Section Cuts," I am going to turn my "Section 2," which is my second floor cut,
"on." I am going to activate my level 2 cut and look what happens there. It's now performing that
same section cut in the exact view of the first floor. Rather than switching to the second floor,
instead I am going to right-click on the second floor, and tell it to update that scene. By doing
that, by just right-clicking that, I didn't switch to it, I just activated that. Now,
if I go to my second floor, you can tell they line up perfectly. Last step at this point is to
go "File" > "Save" and then hop back into LayOut. Now, right now, nothing has changed here, but if I
come in here and I right-click, and I say "update model reference," it's going to move this model
where it is in that scene. Look at that, all of a sudden, without doing any other work, my models
line up perfectly. So, that's just scratching the surface of LayOut. We did not get into a whole lot
of stuff you can do inside of LayOut, but we did touch on some very important pieces that are key
to using LayOut, and that is understanding how your scenes from SketchUp work in your viewports
in LayOut. So, hopefully that tip helped. Would you guys like to see more of LayOut? If so,
let me know down in the comments below. If you want to see more videos like this, go ahead and
subscribe to our channel, that way you'll know when new stuff comes out. We like making these
videos, but we like making them a lot more when they're something that you want to see. Thank you.