Replace materials

cellomagalhaes · 23 Aug 2011, 22:02

How can I replace one material by another material and make all the objects that are being modified with this material? Automatically. Is there any function "replace" one material for another?
Thanks

Dave R · 23 Aug 2011, 22:55

Get the new material and then, while holding Shift, apply the material. It will replace the existing material with the new one. Note that if you have groups or components, those will get painted but not the faces in those groups or components. If you paint the groups or components instead of the faces, you won't have the option to rotate or otherwise adjust the material on those entities.

An alternative that works better is Global Material Changer by the venerable TIG. It will actually apply the selected material to all faces as they should be applied. If the material is not already in your In Model Materials Library, find it, right click and choose Add to Model. Then it will appear in the list.

cellomagalhaes · 26 Aug 2011, 20:02

Thanks Dave,
I installed the plugin but can not find it in the sketch, how do you use it?

Dave R · 26 Aug 2011, 20:13

Do you have a Plugins menu? And did you restart SketchUp after installing the plugin into the Plugins directory?

If there is no Plugins menu, go to Window>Preferences>Extensions and tick the boxes you find there.

If you haven't restarted sketchUp, close it and re-open it.

this is copied from the instructions included in the plugin file. You can open and read .rb files in any text editor.

@unknownuser said:

Usage: 1. Select entities.
[IF there's no selection ALL active entities are used]
2. Activate the script from the Plugins Menu.
3. Choose Old Material [to be replaced].
<< DEFAULT-FRONT >> = NO Material on Front-Face
<< DEFAULT-BACK >> = NO Material on Back-Face
<< DEFAULT >> = ALL Entities that have NO Materials
(e.g. Front AND Back Faces, and Text etc)
<< ALL >> = ALL Materials (Any Face and Any Entitiy)
and then an Alphabetical list of other Materials in the Model.
4. Choose the desired New Material.
[<< DEFAULT >> = No Material]
To access Materials that are off the visible list type
the first letter - e.g. 'W' and use up/down arrow-keys
to move to the one you want e.g. 'W'hite..