All nice topics Saurus! Thanks!
srx wrote:Hatching is not the choice because of the precision, but for CAD files to be manageable. Background images are slowing things down so consultants can not work fluently.
My consultants usually don't need hatching so the CAD exports have no images on them.
However it facilitates construction very much.´
Color is only a number.Hatch is a few numbers. Background image has bitmap representation of many kbytes. Try to export large project with background images to AutoCad and you will see the difference. You can not work with it.
That is true, that's why I don't work with CAD at all. Image info is way richer than vector for describing material and color properties of a project. CAD is just... dull...
So my CAD files have no hatches at all, they're just geometry for consultants... I don't need them and I don't think consultants need them too.
The only time I'd like to have hatches in a cad file is for permits. It's easier to create dwf files from CAD files and in portugal that is standard format for permits (wich I hate actually).
And when you change the scale (of an hatch or image in CAD) you have to change background image resolution. It has to be at least 150dpi to look OK. Hatch and fill color are parametric so they do not depend on scale.
I think quite the opposite actually.
What happens to a CAD hatch is that, if you scale it up, it always keeps the same lineweight. A scaled up vector dotted hatch will either have the same amount of dots and the become invisible if too apart from each other or it will have to be changed (parametrically or manually) so they get a greater density of dots.
A Sketchup raster hatch will always be completelly scaled up. Dots will keep their distance but they will be zoomed in so they will become larger and the hatch keeps it's legibility and density. In my honest opinion having a dotted hatch based on a small 256px jpg looks much better at all scales than a dotted hatch in CAD.
And you can do so much more. You can use real images, colorize them, make them abstract, and they will always tile and work.
Also, don't forget how easy it is to assign a material to a face in sketchup and how hard it is to assign a hatch in Autocad.
The question here is why one would waste so much energy and resources just to have images in technical drawings? I would use them for presentation up to 1:100...nothing more.
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Images are a part of my Sketchup process. The materials you see on my tech drawings are inherited from my concept stages, my permit stages, my renders with Thea, they carry a lot of info, from wood boards size, to paint color, to small brass details... Everything is there already why would I waste time taking it out?
But most importantly why would I waste that information?
That's the beauty of sketchup. I can have it!
I want it on my Technical drawings and I want my contractor to look at the renders I created with Thea and immediatelly associate what he sees in my construction docs with them. Basically it's the same model and he clearly understands the render and now he will focus on how to achieve what's there much easier.
And it facilitates conversation in construction site so much when they understand my drawings.
It never happened when I was producing them on CAD, but now it does and the contractors I work with can really feel the love I put on the project so it's easier for me to convince them to do incredible things.
But it's also practical in terms of giving me less work.
I have some trouble setting up hybrid viewports in Layout but images represent materials so I write less on Construction Docs.
I could use more colors on hatches wich would be easy to achieve and even easier for the contractor's to read but I like black and white hatches because they are neutral, and do not interfere with space material's colors.
Hatching is a great deal of my Architectural design process as at a certain stage I want to study the model by studying the layers that compose it's constructive systems.
I've hatched all my model before I even send it to layout.
The way I hatch in Sketchup is very fast and though it's slower in Layout to have hatched+textured viewports, it's also a great way to check for errors as I'm building viewports at a slower pace. As they are made in Sketchup I correct them in Sketchup.
So the model I take with me for construction site is incredibly rich!
Also I use hatches at 1:50 to 1:1 scale viewports but never display them at smaller scales like 1:100. I use styles to control that and it's very effective. Using styles I can have a single scene in Sketchup displayed at 1:100 scale without any hatch or wall layer lines and still have the same scene, at 1:1 scale with all layers lines and hatches.
All this clearly compensates the hardest part of my project wich is Laying out stuff in Layout. (And exporting to DWF when I have to.)
JQL Thank you for the knowledge you are sharing with us. The question of 
