Materials vs. Entities in model (screenshot)

draftomatic

Can someone explain this screenshot to me? I tried to delete one of those 8 Materials. Where are these materials being used? I even killed Susan...

So how do I get a list of all Materials on existing Entities? Must I loop through model.entities?

solo

You deleted her but never 'purged' the scene, Purging will remove materials.

Chris Fullmer

@solo said:

You deleted her but never 'purged' the scene, Purging will remove materials.

+1

Open your component Browser and look at the "in model" tab. It will show that there is still at least 1 component in the model. It is not being drawn anywhere in the model, but it still has a component definition saved in the model, so the model still considers the colors as being used.

Chris

thomthom

Note: model.materials.length also include materials which Image element uses.

Say you have 2 materials listed in SU's material browser:
Material1
Material2
And you also have one Image element in the model.

Then model.materials.length will report 3.

Even more:
Sketchup.active_model.materials.each { |m| puts m.display_name } Material1 Material2

Notice it only lists the two material visible in the material editor.

This on the other hand:
(0...Sketchup.active_model.materials.length).each { |i| puts Sketchup.active_model.materials[i].display_name } Material1 Material2 Image1

Now you get full access to all the material - even the ones that belong to Image elements.
Be careful! I've had models where image materials has been applied to other geometry - which has lead to problems as you can't select or interact with the material in the Material Browser. So in most cases you want to iterate using .each.

To get a count of just the materials available in the material browser:
m_count = 0 Sketchup.active_model.materials.each { m_count += 1 }

draftomatic

Cool... except that I purged and there is still one material left - "0135_DarkGray". What's up now?

thomthom

@draftomatic said:

Cool... except that I purged and there is still one material left - "0135_DarkGray". What's up now?

You have it selected. The currently active material will not be purged. Select the default material before you purge.

draftomatic

@thomthom said:

You have it selected. The currently active material will not be purged. Select the default material before you purge.

I see... is there a way to find/change the currently active material thru Ruby?

thomthom

Sketchup.active_model.materials.current = nil

Chris Fullmer

material.current is not in the API docs. Do we have that in the thread of things for Scott to fix?

thomthom

Sorry, it's model.materials.current

Chris Fullmer

Sorry, I could have checked that....

thomthom

@chris fullmer said:

material.current is not in the API docs. Do we have that in the thread of things for Scott to fix?

Is that being checked by Scott still?
I'm a bit confused if we're supposed to comment in the API docs...

TIG

There is a reported difference between materials.current on PC and MAC.
On a PC it's the currently selected material
On a MAC it's the last used material and this ignores what might now be selected IF it's never been used...