Although documents tend to include more visual elements than text, you likely want a little text to add headings, bullet points, or other text to your document.In LayOut, you use the Text tool () to type text into a bounded or unbounded text box. You can also bring text into LayOut by importing a supported text document. In the following sections, you find out how all these text options work.

Although LayOut has only a slim chance of moonlighting with an illusionist act in Las Vegas, LayOut’s text isn’t always what it seems.

Images can enhance your LayOut documents all sorts of ways, from a photorealistic rendering of a proposed design to a small branding element like a logo. The following table outlines the file formats that LayOut supports. You can insert an image file in any of these formats into your document.

Every once in a while, depending on your SketchUp and LayOut preferences or perhaps the capabilities of your computer, SketchUp model entities don’t display well or at all in the LayOut document area.In this article, you find details and solutions to the most common SketchUp model entity display issues.SketchUp model entities look blockyTo balance performance with display quality, LayOut displays elements in the document area at a medium resolution. If your model entities look blocky, try increasing the resolution by following these steps:

Although LayOut enables you to edit view and style settings without switching back to SketchUp, LayOut doesn't enable you to edit the actual model. For that, you must open the model file in SketchUp.When you need to edit the geometry or other SketchUp-only features, LayOut does make it easy to open a model in SketchUp and keep the updated SketchUp file synched with your LayOut document.

You can create as many pages as your document needs and manage them all right from the Pages panel. The Pages menu also has commands to create and navigate pages.The Pages panel contains the following options to help manage your pages:

LayOut provides several options to help you navigate your documents. The Zoom tools () and the Pan Tool () can help you focus on a specific part of your document or give you a wider view of your whole document.

Most applications have a few editing commands in common (copy, cut, paste, undo, and delete), and LayOut is definitely part of that crowd. Moreover, the way these commands work is similar to, if not the same as, other applications.Cutting, copying, and pasting elements in the drawing areaIn LayOut, you have several ways to make a copy:

In LayOut, whenever you click a color swatch (like the swatches in the Shape Style panel) or select Window > Colors, LayOut transports you to the Colors panel, where you have a half dozen ways to choose and organize the colors for your LayOut document. Tip: If you need to match your document colors to your company’s or client’s branding or just want to use colors consistently across documents, the Colors panel options enable you to choose those colors precisely and even save color swatches for later use.

You can mask out a portion of a model or image by creating a clipping mask. When you create a clipping mask, you see only the portion of the model or image that appears within a shape. To create a clipping mask, follow these steps: