Hi,
I am wondering if there’s a possibility of incorporating layout management through having templates akin to how InDesign has Parent/Master pages. This could control all manner of settings for layouts which have been assigned a template/parent. Such things which come to mind are layer states, all layer variables, dynamic text etc.
Perhaps this can be achieved with blocks, but I’m not sure.
Kindly,
-Jeremy
Hi Jeremy -
Your description is very general, but it sounds like you could do this by having a master layout in your (template) file and creating copies of that for new layouts or by importing a layout from a different template file with all those variables set.
-wim
Some further notes.
One could create the Parent template layout, and when you create a new layout, you could choose that or any other parent template to inherit, and that means further on the track, you can edit the parent template, and the children layouts will adjust accordingly. The children layouts could have overrides, or those could be reset within the parent layout. This system allows both global updating, or local customisation. I’m sure the devs at McNeel would be able to make this a robust and powerful implementation.
Jeremy
Hi Wim, thanks for your reply.
I have a moderate understanding of layouts, as I have been using them for around four years.
Broadly speaking, what I am thinking is that it would be useful to be able to more readily control the contents of a large amount of layouts in case something needs to be updated.
I’ll give you an example. Yesterday, I took around three hours to create 36 layouts all specifically having identical appearance and draw orders for objects on screen. I then realised that there was a layer which was on, which needed to be turned off on every single layout, but needed to be on for the model space. I had to click into every single of the 36 layouts, and turn that layer off for each individual layout. Similarly, if I wanted to create a new layer, it may be difficult to prevent this from appearing by default in all of the layouts.
if a system like what I am thinking might exist, I could apply a parent template to any number of children layouts, even after they have been created, and turn off all those detail layers in one click.
So to refine or clarify a little bit.
-I imagine parent templates as a way of taking control of the customised appearance and visibility of multiple details across multiple layouts.
- The template could also control the positioning of geometry or contents on the layout, that are separate to the details themselves. Again, this is very similar to how Adobe in design manages information. I could update contents on one template, anything which inherit that template would be automatically updated, even if it had dynamic contents such as text etc. Or, I could create a new template, and choose to apply it to any number of pages.
- The templates could be size specific, or size non-specific, meaning that the contents of a template could be applied to say an A3 layout in the same way that they are applied to an A1 layout; where the contents of the template are simply pinned to the edge of the frame as the frame gets bigger, but the annotations don’t increase in size. Or everything could be scaled up proportionally to the change in size of page. intelligent repositioning might be difficult between pages of different aspect ratios however. Adobe fails to do this last part very well I believe.
- The template could be on a per detail, or per layout basis. For example, there might be three different details on one layout. Each of those different details could be associated with different templates, whilst the layout itself could be associated with an entirely separate template. On this note, it could be such that a user could create a frame on a layout which holds the position and contents of what is controlled by the template. This is sort of like a block, but allows for much more dynamic control.
- so just thinking aloud; a template could be created and applied to individual details, frames within layouts, or layouts themselves.
- The templates could control what is seen, where it is seen, how big it is, whether it is proportional to the page size or not, It’s anchor point for scaling, all of the layer options currently seen, or rules for future creation of layers. These templates could contain any geometry, any annotation style, dynamic text etc.
- All of these contents can override the templates once they have been created, or the user can choose to update the template, and then choose which children contents to update with the changes made to the template. This is all about versatility and efficiency and control.
Obviously, there would need to be a considerable amount of thought put into the rules which would govern the design of such an implementation, to prevent problematic conflicts etc., but I think overall this could be very powerful.
obviously, there would need to be a considerable amount of thought put into the rules which would govern the design of such an implementation, to prevent problematic conflicts etc., but I think overall this could be very powerful.
Best
Jeremy
Alongside the use of templates, synchronisation could be incorporated. It is very similar, but doesn’t necessarily adhere to the hierarchy of templates. however, it may be able to update the template. Or, simply the user could copy the contents from child content to the parent template and then re-update the parent template so that all/selected children content now incorporate those updates.
Let me just give you one example or permutation of how this might play out using synchronisation.
Let’s say I have 2 layouts, A and B. On layout A, I have one detail, and on layout B, I have two details. on layout A, I could enter the detail, set the display mode, set individual object display modes, set individual layer detail print widths/colours, set whether that detail shows newly created layers, set the camera to a named view, exit the detail, set the detail scale, set its draw order, set whether it is locked, set potentially if its anchor point is attached to the corner of the page. Then I could run synchronisation, and choose which other other details on different layouts to synchronise any number of these settings. these three different details could all be given a template ID, so that they potentially automatically update if one detail is updated.
This borrows ideas slightly from say how Adobe Lightroom classic synchronises across different images.