Most of the drawing tools have drop down options expanding the types of shapes you can create.
The Line Tool can create straight lines by clicking point to point, or if you click and
drag your mouse button you can create curves.
Just like SketchUp, you can enter exact dimensions for your lines as well.
After drawing a shape, double click on the shape to edit it.
For more control of points when editing a shape, use the Control key on Windows or
the Option key on a Mac.
This allows you to add points or break curve handles as well as realign them.
To delete existing points, drag them over another point.
Some tools like the Rounded Rectangle can be adjusted with the arrow keys on your keyboard
while you are drawing them.
Press the keys up and down to adjust the curves.
The Polygon Tool works like it does in SketchUp.
Start drawing, type a number followed by s, for sides, and press Enter.
Complex shapes can be made by using the Split Tool to break edges, and the Join Tool to
combine edges into a single shape.
You can also group various shapes and objects together to act as one entity.
One final note on drawing or moving shapes or objects in general, you can toggle a grid
on or off and toggle object snapping or grid snapping as well.
The Shape Style dialog box is where you can adjust Fill, Pattern, and Stroke options for
any shape, even shapes that aren't closed.
If you select a shape, any changes you make will be for that shape only, and the options
will reset when you deselect or focus on another object.
If nothing is selected, however, you can make changes to the default options for any future
shapes.
Note that you can create arrow options for lines as well.
These can be for individual lines or made to be the default options.
Shape Styles can be quickly sampled and applied to other objects with the Style Tool.
For inserting and using SketchUp models we recommend setting up Scenes in your SketchUp
model for views you want in LayOut.
These Scenes will be saved and updated in LayOut.
Because of the many options that may be saved to a Scene in SketchUp it's a great way to
control views, layer visibility, styles, section cuts...
Any setting that can be controlled via Scenes will translate to LayOut.
When you do make changes to the SketchUp model view in LayOut, those changes can be updated
automatically, or if you prefer you can turn off auto rendering, and update manually.
This may be useful if you have a complex Scene and several changes to make, so you aren't
waiting on LayOut to render each change you make.
Another tip for improving rendering and operating speed in LayOut is to understand the Rendering
Modes for your SketchUp model.
For most purposes, Raster is the fastest mode, and what you want to generally use.
Vector mode will render very crisp linework, but won't render raster graphics such as materials,
and can also take a long time to render for detailed scenes.
Hybrid mode is a mix of raster and vector rendering, resulting in crisp linework as
well as materials.
But it potentially takes the longest time to render.
Although raster mode may not look great on your screen, keep in mind it will look much
better when exported or printed out.
You can also control the editing quality versus the output quality in the Document Setup under
the File menu.
Higher editing quality will improve your onscreen view, but also add greatly to your render
time to test these settings with your projects to see what works best for you.
Generally the Medium settings should work well.
There are several methods you can use to share your LayOut document.
Printing, of course, as well as exporting the document as a PDF, a series of image files
in PNG or JPG format, or exporting in DWG and DXF formats.
You can also enter into a full screen presentation mode, using the arrow keys to move between
pages, and using basic annotation tools to make notes that can be saved to the LayOut
file for later reference.
In the Pages dialog you can create new Pages, duplicate existing Pages, or delete Pages.
You can also toggle the Page view as thumbnail images or a list view.
To rename existing Pages you need to be in the list view.
Pages share a connection to Layers in LayOut.
Some Layer settings are universal, such as locking a Layer, Layer visibility however,
is unique to each Page.
This is useful when using shared layers.
A simple example will help to show this.
We'll put each of these shapes on their own Layer corresponding to their color.
And create a few more blank Pages.
Now we'll make the blue and green layers shared Layers, which means they are shared across
all pages, as are any changes we make on that layer.
However, if there are certain pages where you don't want this shared content, simply
hide the Layer for that Page.
One more note about Layers, you can arrange objects by context clicking on them and moving
them forward or backward within their layer.
Layer stacking, however, is going to move everything within that Layer above or below
all objects in other Layers.
Scrapbooks are collections of shapes, text and SketchUp models.
In fact, Scrapbooks are simply LayOut documents made available for you to sample from.
Try looking through the existing Scrapbook library and pull out a few examples.
Dragging out an object will place just one copy, but if you click on the object in the
Scrapbook, you can place as many in your document as you'd like.
You can also use the Style eyedropper to sample objects in Scrapbooks, making a great repository
of commonly used items and commonly used Styles and Colors.
To add your own Scrapbooks, create a new document with various Pages as needed.
Generate the content you need and organize it by those Pages, then via the File menu,
save your document as a Scrapbook.
It will show up immediately within the Scrapbook Dialog box and be available for your future
LayOut documents.
You can also save you LayOut documents as Templates.
This will save any document, Page, and Layer configurations so that Template will be available
in the Template menu when creating a new LayOut document.