What is best practice for material "made of" vs colored?

[bwerst]

Hi,

What is the best practice for indicating what something is made of verses how it is colored or textured?

Examples:

A wall is covered with "drywall" that is painted some "color".
A box is made out of "20 gauge sheet metal", but painted blue.
A piece of furniture is made out of cherry wood, but coated with xyz stain.

The end goal is a standardized way of handling the material something is made from to for instance produce a Bill of Materials. And then separately be able to see how its painted to see what it will really look like. Even better would be a way of determining how much of a given color/type of paint was also needed.

Currently I see two options.

1. Assign the "made of" material to the component. Assign the color/texture to the individual faces.

2. Use Sketchup Materials strickly for painting/textures and then a custom attribute for "made of" materials.

Unfortunately #2 is non-standardized which might be problematic. Think about if this model was later going to be transferred into IFC or some other BIM tool.

What do you think is the best practice for this?

[Gaieus]

Well, very shortly put: if I badly need a certain material, I either try to find it on the internet or find at least similar (or take photos) and make them.

Honestly speaking, the SU material library is far from perfect - it's rather just an example of what can be made a material. Sooner or later you will find yourself image editing materials you need.

[Dave R]

How about this?

Color the wall with the color of the paint and name the material "drywall"
Paint the box blue and rename the blue material "20 ga. sheet metal"
Paint the piece of furniture with a woodgrain material the color of the stained cherry and name it "cherry"

A simple note can identify the finish.

[thomthom]

@dave r said:

How about this?

Color the wall with the color of the paint and name the material "drywall"
Paint the box blue and rename the blue material "20 ga. sheet metal"
Paint the piece of furniture with a woodgrain material the color of the stained cherry and name it "cherry"

A simple note can identify the finish.

+1

I always try to name my material so I can find and reuse them. A model becomes messy if you keep picking the same colour from the material browser - ending up with many materials of the exact same colour. That just lead to a pain when you want to change it later on.

Give material a semantic meaning and make sure you use the correct one for the correct place. Managing materials becomes so much easier that way.