Some menu bar minutiae
Just like almost every other piece of software in the universe, LayOut has a menu bar. And just like SketchUp, you can use LayOut's menu bar to access the vast majority of its tools, commands, settings, and dialog boxes. Here's a brief description of each of LayOut's nine menus:
1 File: No big surprises here — you use the items in the File menu to create new LayOut files, save and adjust settings for the document you're working on, and insert SketchUp and other graphics files.
1 Edit: You use the items in the Edit menu to copy and paste, work with clipping masks (LayOut's version of cropping), and control object grouping.
In the Windows version of LayOut, the Edit menu includes Preferences, which is where you can do some things to customize LayOut.
1 View: Besides standard stuff like controls for zooming, the most interesting item here is Full Screen, which lets you view your LayOut as a PowerPoint-style slide presentation.
1 Text: Fifty bonus points if you can figure out what the items in the Text menu are for — there's nothing out of the ordinary here.
1 Arrange: Because LayOut documents are basically well-organized collections of images, inserted SketchUp models, text, and callouts, you need to be able to control everything's place on the page. In the Arrange menu, you find commands for controlling the horizontal, vertical, and stacking-order position of every element in your document, as well as controls for telling LayOut what snap settings to use.
Stacking order refers to the fact that all elements on the same layer in your document are either in front of or behind other elements. When one thing is overlapping another, their stacking order determines which one you see and which one is hidden.
Snap settings help you position elements on your page by making it easier to line things up with a grid or with other elements. Depending on what you're trying to do, you might choose to work with both kinds of snap settings, just one, or none at all; I usually switch between them while I'm working.
1 Tools: Here's where you'll find all of LayOut's tools (big surprise); there are a lot more of them than you think. Luckily, most are pretty specialized, so you don't need to know them all before you get started.
1 Pages: Given the complexity of most of the software we all have to use, it's almost adorable how few items live in the Pages menu. Your LayOut presentation can have many pages, and here's where you add, delete, duplicate, and move among them.
1 Window: In the Window menu, you find links to all of LayOut's dialog boxes; take a look at the next section in this chapter for a rundown on all of them.
1 Help: Just like SketchUp, the Help menu should be the first and last place you go when you're stuck. It's also a great place to look for resources (besides this book) that can help you get started; I highly recommend watching the video tutorials — they're great.
1 LayOut (Mac only): The Mac version of LayOut includes a LayOut menu, which is standard operating procedure for Mac applications. The important thing in this menu is Preferences, which lets you set up the program the way you want it.
Toolbar Menu bar
Document window
Dialog boxes
Figure 15-1:
The LayOut user interface.
Toolbar Menu bar
Document window
Dialog boxes
Figure 15-1:
The LayOut user interface.
A dialog box discourse
You can find most of LayOut's knobs and switches in its eight dialog boxes. In Windows, most of LayOut's dialog boxes are contained in a "tray" that appears on the right side of your screen by default. On the Mac, your dialog boxes float around willy-nilly, but you can "snap" them together if you want.
Here's a one-minute description of each:
1 Colors: Just about all your LayOut documents will use color in some way, so you'll need this dialog box most of the time. The nice thing about Color is that it appears when you need it; clicking any color well in LayOut pops it open (if it wasn't already open).
To hide a dialog box without closing it, click its title bar once to minimize it. Click again to see the whole thing.
1 Shape Style: A lot of the graphic elements in your presentation can have color fills and strokes (outlines). The Shape Style dialog box is where you control the appearance of those fills and strokes. Check out the options in the Start and End drop-down menus — you won't find callout styles like these in most other layout programs.
il SketchUp Model: The greatest thing about LayOut (at least with respect to other software like it) is its ability to include 2D views of your SketchUp models. In the SketchUp Model dialog box, you can control all sorts of things about the way your "placed" SketchUp model looks, including camera views, scenes, styles, shadows, and fog. For folks who spend a lot of time laying out presentation drawings that include SketchUp models, the SketchUp Model dialog box is a godsend.
I Text Style: If you've ever used another piece of page layout or illustration software, you should be pretty familiar with what the Text Style dialog box lets you do. You use it to control the font, size, style, color, and alignment of text in your document.
I Pages: You use the Pages dialog box to manage the pages in your document. You can add, delete, and rearrange them to your heart's content. The List and Icon buttons at the top let you toggle between views of your pages; I prefer to use the former and give my pages meaningful names as I work. The little icons on the right control visibility for shared layers and full-screen presentations.
Shared layers are somewhat unique to LayOut; they let you automatically place elements on more than one page. For more detail, see the section "Simplifying Layout with Layers and Master Layers," later in this chapter.
I Layers: You can have multiple layers of content in every LayOut document you create.
I like to work with at least four layers, organizing content on each as follows:
• Elements that should appear in the same place on almost every page, like logos and project titles
• Things that appear in the same place on most pages, but that change from page to page, like numbers and page titles
• Content (like images and SketchUp model views) that only appears on a single page
• Unused stuff that I'm not sure I want, but that I don't want to delete
Use the Layers dialog box to add, delete, and rearrange layers in your document. The icons on the right let you hide (and show), lock, and share individual layers.
I Scrapbooks: This one's a little trickier to explain; scrapbooks are unique to LayOut, so you probably haven't worked with anything like them before. Scrapbooks are LayOut files that live in a special folder on your computer system. They contain colors, text styles, and graphic elements (like scale cars, trees, and people) that you might need to use in more than one of your LayOut documents. To use something you see in a scrapbook, just click it, and then click again in your Drawing Window to "stamp" it in.
You can create your own scrapbooks if you want. Just choose FileOSave as Scrapbook from the menu bar to save any LayOut file as a scrapbook that will show up in your Scrapbooks dialog box.
1 Instructor: The Instructor dialog box works just like it does in SketchUp; it shows information on whichever tool you happen to be using. If you're just starting out with LayOut, make sure that this dialog box is open.
Setting up LayOut preferences
In LayOut, as in SketchUp, you have two kinds of preferences to worry about: those that apply to every LayOut document you work on and those that only apply to the document you happen to be working on at the moment. Settings for the former are made in the Preferences dialog box; controls for the latter reside in Document Setup. The following sections describe what I mean.
Preferences
The LayOut Preferences dialog box is made up of six panels. You open it by choosing EditOPreferences in Windows or LayOutOPreferences on the Mac. Here's what you'll find on each panel:
i Applications: Tell LayOut what programs you want to use to edit image and text files when you right-click them (in LayOut) and choose Open with Image (or Text) Editor from the context menu.
i Backup: Work smart by letting LayOut auto-save and create automatic backups of your file. Here's where you tell it where and how often to do so.
i Folders: Let LayOut know where to look for the templates and scrap-books on your computer. Templates show up when you start LayOut or open a new document; scrapbooks appear in the Scrapbook dialog box.
1 Scales: This is a list of scales you can choose from for a SketchUp model view you've placed in your LayOut document. If you want to use a certain drawing scale and it doesn't show up in the Scales pane of the SketchUp Model dialog box, feel free to add it here. This is not the drawing scale for the document you're currently working on, so don't worry about that.
i Shortcuts: Just like SketchUp, you use this panel to define a keyboard shortcut for any tool or command in LayOut.
1 Startup: In this panel, tell LayOut how to behave every time you launch it.
Document Setup
The Document Setup dialog box includes five panels. You open it by choosing FileODocument Setup in the menu bar. Here's the skinny on each panel:
il General: Feel free to enter information about yourself and your document; this might be important if you're working on a team.
I Grid: Nothing beats a grid for helping to line up elements in your presentations. Use the options in this panel to control the visibility, size, and "snapability" of the grid in your document, if you want one. For Show Major, type in an interval for the darker grid lines. For Show Minor, enter the number of divisions between dark lines you'd like to have. For >4-inch squares, you would enter 1 inch for the former and 4 for the latter.
I Paper: Here's where you tell LayOut the size of the sheet of paper you'd like to use for your document. You can also control the width of your margins and the resolution at which you'd like your SketchUp model views to print. See the section "Creating a new, blank document," later in this chapter, for a list of recommended resolutions.
I References: When you insert a SketchUp model or an image in your LayOut document, LayOut creates a file reference that keeps track of where it came from.
If you edit the original file (which you probably will), this panel lets you know whether LayOut is showing the most currently saved version. For people who go back and forth between design and presentation documents a lot (sound familiar?), the References panel is a gift from the heavens.
I Units: Depending on where you live and work, you might use a different system of measurement. Use the Units panel to pick the right one for your workflow.
Tooting around
LayOut has lots of tools, but as with most software, you spend most of your time with only a handful of them. You can find the complete list in the Tools menu, but it's easier to get at them on the toolbar. This strip, across the top of your Drawing Window, includes icons for the most commonly used tools (and commands), but you can easily add others if you want to. Here's a bullet point on each of the tools in the LayOut toolbar's default set. (See Figure 15-2, which shows the toolbar for the Windows version of LayOut.)
Figure 15-2:
The default toolbar in LayOut.
You can customize it if you Select want to.
Eraser
Line
Polygon Previous Page
Eraser
Line
Polygon Previous Page
Style
Next Page
Style
Next Page
1 Select: Select, rotate, and scale elements in your document. Double-click to edit text.
i Eraser: Click or drag over any unlocked elements to erase them.
1 Style: Click any element to sample (soak up) its fill, stroke, and other attributes. Doing so turns the tool into the Bucket, which you use to apply those attributes to other elements in your document by clicking them.
i Split: Cut one line segment (whether curved or straight) into two by clicking where you want the split to occur. Turning Object Snap on (in the Arrange menu) is very helpful for splitting shapes at their corners.
1 Join: Turn two line segments (curved or straight) into a single one by clicking each in turn. Both are highlighted blue when they're joined.
1 Line: Draw a straight line by clicking to define start points and endpoints. Press Esc to stop drawing a line.
1 2-Point Arc (Windows): Draw an arc by clicking once to define one end, again to define the other, and a third time to define the bulge, or curvature.
1 Arc with Center (Mac): Draw an arc by clicking once to define the arc's center point, again to start the arc (which defines its radius), and a third time to end the arc. You can draw an arc in two ways; check out the Tools menu to see all of them.
1 Rectangle: Draw a rectangle by clicking to define opposite corners.
1 Circle: Draw a circle by clicking once to define a center and again to define a radius.
1 Polygon: Draw polygons by first entering a side count and then using your mouse. Select the Polygon tool, type the number of sides followed by the letter s (8s for an octagon), and then press Enter. Now click once with your mouse to define a center point and again to draw the shape. Whew.
1 Text: Draw an empty text box into which you can enter text. If you need to select text you've already typed, double-click it with the Select tool.
1 Label: Draw a text label with a leader line by clicking to define the end of the line (where it's pointing), clicking again to define the beginning, and then typing in some text.
1 Add Page: Add a page after the one you're on.
1 Previous Page: View the previous page in your document.
1 Next Page: View the next page in your document.
Adding more tool icons to your toolbar is easy; just right-click the toolbar and choose Customize to bring up the Customize dialog box.
Switching to LayOut from similar software
If you're used to using other page-layout or illustration software, some things about LayOut are useful to know when you're just getting started. The folks who designed LayOut did things a little differently on purpose, hoping to do for page layout in 2007 what they did for 3D design seven years earlier — make it easier for motivated people with no experience to produce good work, quickly.
Here, I point out the five things you should keep in mind when you're exploring LayOut:
I LayOut includes templates that help you get up and running in no time. See the nearby section "Starting out with templates" for details.
I You can insert models from SketchUp, skipping the process of exporting your model as an image file. Importing has the added benefit of helping you automatically update model views in your presentation. See the section "Bringing In Everything You Need," later in this chapter, for details.
I The Layers feature in LayOut is a powerful tool for organizing your content. In particular, you can place content that appears on more than one of your pages on a master layer, so you only have to position it once. The section "Simplifying Layout with Layers and Master Layers," later in this chapter, outlines just what you need to know.
I In LayOut, you have enormous flexibility to crop images, including model views, with ease using clipping masks. The section "Cropping with clipping masks," later in this chapter, explains how in four easy steps.
I When your presentation is ready to go, LayOut enables you to set up digital slide shows in full-screen mode, as well as to create printouts and PDF files.
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