Performance
The Performance section is full of options that can help you adjust the way LayOut handles graphics to improve overall performance.
Draft Mode
Draft Mode improves document navigation performance by deferring the final rendering of complex entities. While active, LayOut displays simplified representations of entities. It omits final line weights, dashes, and pattern fills, which allows smoother zooming, panning, and editing.
Draft Mode is disabled by default.
Note: Draft Mode only affects the interactive display within your workspace. All hidden details, line weights, and pattern fills are fully restored when printing or exporting your document.
You can fine-tune Draft Mode behavior to balance system responsiveness with visual accuracy, using the following options:
Enable Draft Mode – Select to turn on Draft Mode. When selected, choose from the following options in the adjacent dropdown:
Pan and Zoom Only - Simplifies geometry while actively navigating the document canvas.
Always On: - Keeps Draft Mode active at all times.
Disable SketchUp Viewport Drawing - When selected, hides the model geometry within SketchUp viewports and displays only their outer bounding boxes.
Disable Raster-Rendered Object Drawing - When selected, suppresses rendering for raster-based objects, including images, pattern fills, and raster-rendered SketchUp model viewports. It displays only their outer bounding boxes.
Tip: Setting Draft Mode to Always On creates thin, uniform line work across viewports, making it significantly easier to trace over underlying SketchUp models. Press K (default keyboard shortcut for Draft Mode) to toggle Draft Mode on or off.
Pan and Zoom Redraw Delay
LayOut automatically re-renders documents after canvas navigation. The Render Delay slider controls the duration between completing a pan or zoom action and initiating the rendering process. The duration range follows.
Default setting: 0.3 s
Adjustable range: 0.1 – 3.0 s
Graphics Engine
LayOut's graphics engine draws entities on your pages and redraws them as you pan, zoom, or navigate between different pages. This Graphics engine affects page graphics that LayOut naturally draws like text, lines, fills, patterns, and images. The new graphics engine boosts performance of these native entities and provides a modern graphical infrastructure and flexibility for future updates. The Use new graphics engine option is selected by default unless your device is incompatible with it. If you prefer to use the classic graphics engine, you can choose the Use classic graphics engine option instead.
Viewport Vector and Hybrid Rendering Engine (SketchUp Labs)
Note: The new rendering engine is a SketchUp Labs feature. Labs features are still in active development and may change or be removed at any time. For more information see SketchUp Labs.
The new rendering engine focuses on SketchUp model rendering and accelerates Hidden Line Rendering (HLR) by significantly reducing vector linework generation time for complex models. It achieves this performance boost while maintaining or improving overall drawing fidelity in complex models. The update improves rendering performance for models when set to the Vector or Hybrid mode.
For more information on render modes and how to specify them for SketchUp models, see Rendering Models.