[Plugin] Material Tools

Tomi

@chris fullmer said:

I'll help get the ball rolling...

Do you just want a single material applied to the entire component? Like, you want all components named "doorhandle_01" to be painted silver, regardless how deep they are buried?

Also, how many DIFFERENT components are there? You say thousands, but is it 10os of copies of only 10 different components? Or is it really thousands of different components?

Do you have a sample model you could upload?

Yes. I'd like to apply a single material to a component, regardless of how deep they are buried.

Yep, there's thousands of separate components all made to create a building. I've uploaded a zipped file of just the structure. Added to this is secondary structure, claddings, windows, stairs, floors - essentially every element of the entire build (right down to silly things that I probably shouldn't have detailed, like the rubber seals in between the panes of double glazing). The plan is to do an exploded perspective along the way (I'd love it if there was a plugin for this!).

Structure.skp.zip

Tomi

@thomthom said:

If you want to transfer the layer colours to the geometry, then there's already a plugin out there. Search for " layers_materials" at http://www.sketchucation.com/extensions-index/

I'm going to try this now. Do you know if it applies the layer colours to even geometry nested as components within larger components? Thanks thomthom

Tomi

Hang about, sometimes when you're stressed you miss things. I had a little meditation, came back to re-read your first comment, thomthom, and just needed to select layer by colour like you suggested. Thanks a million (and Chris) for your help. It's kind people like you who by sharing, make the world a better place. I didn't need any plugins after all, but as I'm falling back in love with sketchup, how do you load them? I went to the layers_materials plugin page and the link brought up a script...

thomthom

Place the .rb file in the Plugins folder where SU is installed. Some plugins also include folders that needs to be extracted to the plugin folder as well.

Sir

ok, not actually thousands of components! you have lots of instances, but with the others added you'll only have a hundred or so, maybe 200!

have you found the components window yet? this is a good way to keep track of the components in your model. you can also use it to add materials to specific components by

insert a new copy of the component into the model, doesnt matter where
add material to that new one. this will update all instances (copys) of it throughout the model
delete the inserted component

repeat

Tomi

@sir said:

ok, not actually thousands of components! you have lots of instances, but with the others added you'll only have a hundred or so, maybe 200!

have you found the components window yet? this is a good way to keep track of the components in your model. you can also use it to add materials to specific components by

insert a new copy of the component into the model, doesnt matter where

add material to that new one. this will update all instances (copys) of it throughout the model

delete the inserted component

repeat

Thanks. Still getting my head round the nitty gritty. Thomthom's simple suggestion achieved what I wanted to do - add materials according to layer - by using the colour by layer option. But that's a great tip - my drawings is mainly organised into layers, but supposedly by this way I could have more control if needed and change individual components on the same layer. Thanks for your help.

Sir

very useful plugin thomthom. is it possible to add the functionality to remove ALL materials but ONLY from the selection?

fantastic!

thomthom

@sir said:

very useful plugin thomthom. is it possible to add the functionality to remove ALL materials but ONLY from the selection?

fantastic!

Yea, that would be possible. I was thinking of doing that anyway.

Sir

thomthom

Only one thing; what would be the expected behaviour if the selection contains an component instance?

Sir

id have to say that remove from all instances too, as you'd want them all the same, no? suppose it could always be a check before compleating the script tho, im sure someone would want it both ways!

TIG

Can't you just use my GlobalMaterialChanger.rb ? ... It works on a selection, OR the whole model... and it asks if you want to 'mine' down into groups and instances etc...

Sir

i wasnt aware of it... ill go take a look

Pout

great! Thx!

Gaieus

Hi Thom,

sorry for bumping the topic... Could you add "Remove materials applied to back faces"? (Or is there a plugin that does that already?)

thomthom

Al-ka-zam!

TIG

@gaieus said:

Hi Thom,
sorry for bumping the topic... Could you add "Remove materials applied to back faces"? (Or is there a plugin that does that already?)

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=264134#p264134 = My recent tools include three options:

If a face has no front-material but does have a back-material it reverses the face and moves the back-material onto the front keeping the UV mapping etc. It works on selected faces, and after a confirmation-dialog faces in groups, components, or just 'all'.
If a face has a front-material and also has a back-material it reverses the face and moves the back-material onto the front keeping the UV mapping etc and erases the other material - i.e. the back-material is finally defaulted [it is 'forced' - use with care!]. It works only on selected faces.
It removes back-materials from all selected faces, and after a confirmation-dialog faces in groups, components, or just 'all'.

Gaieus

Cool, TIG, thanks! I knew I remembered reading something but you guys spoil us with the abundance of new plugins every day so it's really hard to keep up with the development!

Ben Ritter

Thomas, thank you.

Zacchia

thanks for this plugin!!