LayOut is part of SketchUp Pro. It's designed to document and present your SketchUp models.
To follow along with this tutorial, you'll need a SketchUp model. Use a model you've
created or find one from the 3D Warehouse. To begin, save your model and send it to LayOut
through the File menu. LayOut will ask for a template to start with. There are default
templates corresponding to standard paper sizes or titleblocks. For our example, let's
use a plain paper template. A window into your SketchUp model is placed on the page.
This window is easily manipulated with the Select Tool, which is, in fact, a multi-tool.
You can select the window, move it around on your page, drag on an edge or corner of
the window to resize it, and even rotate this window with the rotate gizmo. Many of the
tools in LayOut function similarly to their SketchUp counterparts, and this is true of
the Select Tool. You can click to select a single object, or drag a selection window.
Remember, a selection window going right to left selects any objects crossed by the window.
Where a selection window going left to right will only select what is completely inside
the window, just like SketchUp. Select and scale our window so it covers about half the page.
As with the Move Tool in SketchUp, you can create copies of objects by moving them
and pressing and holding the control key on a Windows machine, or the option key on a Mac.
Begin moving our SketchUp window, press the control
or option key and create a copy of the model window. Scale this window and create a third
copy above it. With these three windows of our SketchUp model, let's explore the real
power of LayOut. Use the Select Tool and double click on one of the windows to change the
view of the SketchUp model itself. You can use the scroll wheel on your mouse, just as
you would in SketchUp, roll the wheel over different parts of the model to zoom toward
that area, press the wheel down to orbit, and press the wheel down in combination with
the Shift key, or the left mouse button, to pan. Try this on all three windows. Create
a unique view of your SketchUp model for each window. Now right, or context click, on one
of the model views and choose "Open with SketchUp." Back in SketchUp, make some changes to your
model, to the geometry or materials, and save your work. Switch back to LayOut and those
changes you make will be updated in all the model windows. If your model does not update
automatically, right, or context click, on the windows and choose "Update Model Reference."
This is the power of LayOut. It creates a direct link to your SketchUp model giving
you powerful printing, presentation, and documentation capabilities. With this introduction, let's
look deeper into the LayOut tools. Some are built to complement the connection with your
SketchUp model, and some are built to make LayOut a powerful tool on its own. Start by
opening the SketchUp Model dialog box from the Window menu. One of the things you should
notice is a number of settings are identical to options in SketchUp. Select one or more
of our view windows and toggle the shadows or fog. You also have all the default Styles
available from SketchUp, or any unique Styles saved with your model. Try this: make one
of your windows larger so it overlaps other views. Make it the top image by right, or
context clicking, and from the submenu choose Arrange > Bring to Front. Now select all three
windows and choose a basic Style with a standard white background. Toggle the background off
and watch how your model geometry creates its own clipping mask making for unique compositing
options. Speaking of clipping masks, another way to create them is to draw one shape
over another. Use the Circle Tool and draw a circle to highlight part of the model. Now
select both the circle and the SketchUp window, right, or context click, and chose "Create
Clipping Mask." There are many drawing tools for creating unique shapes in LayOut. Unlike
SketchUp, overlapping or touching shapes do not automatically break. However, you can
combine multiple shapes by using the Split Tool to break edges and the Join Tool to weld
touching edges together. To control how these and other shapes look open the Shape Style dialog box. Here you can change
settings such as line weight and fill options. Play with these settings and note that you
can select SketchUp windows as well. Also note you can affect shapes you have already
selected, or if nothing is selected you can change the default settings for future shapes.
Let's create a new page for our document by opening the Pages dialog box. You can create
a new blank page or duplicate any selected page. We'll duplicate this page and change
the SketchUp views. Delete one view and resize the others into a horizontal orientation.
We'll make these into orthographic elevations. Select one view and using the SketchUp dialog
box pick a standard view from the front or side. Now select the scale that fits well
on our page. You will likely need to edit this view using Pan to best position it. Repeat
this process with our second view. Select it, choose an orthographic view, a scale,
and position it on the page. Now use the Annotation or Dimension Tools to document your model.
The tools will snap to your actual model geometry. You can toggle this snapping on and off as
needed. Context click in a blank area to toggle object or gird snapping on or off. One final
note as you start using LayOut. Under the File menu choose "Document Setup." There are
several settings here that will be useful to you. We just saw the ability to toggle
and snap to grids, and here's where you can customize that grid. You can also change the
page size or default units. Under the Page tab is also the Rendering Resolution. This
is important to keeping LayOut running smoothly. Keep the edit quality setting at Medium or
Low to maximize the speed of LayOut while you are working. But when you are ready to
export images or PDFs, your Output Quality can be set to Medium or High for great results.
There are many more features to LayOut that will help you work quickly and change how
you share your SketchUp models. So continue exploring, or look into more of our learning
materials.