Can't delete materials
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This is an old gripe but one that's currently rearing its ugly face at me so I thought I'd vent here. Maybe everyone doesn't have this issue? If you've found any secrets let me know.
I hate that in only the smallest of models with maybe 6 or 7 materials can you right click a material which promptly pops up the context menu allowing you to delete it. But when you get a big boy sized model with 50-70 materials SU ponders your petty appeal before promptly poking you in the eye. I wait for a bit before being rewarded by a brief glance at the context menu before the screen flashes a bit and the context menu goes away (I swear I can see it giving me the finger as it disappears). At this point I try again but this time hold the mouse VERY still (maybe it was MY fault, I say), with similar results.
After 6 more similar tries I get desperate and begin the ritual dance to the sketchup god's to repent of whatever grievance they have against me. But they don't answer my petitions. Now I've got about 15 materials that can't be purged (I'm not sure WHERE in my model they are but they must be somewhere) and can't be deleted either. It gnaws on my obsessive compulsive sensibilities!
-Brodie
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Hi Brodie, hi folks.
They may be on hidden objects or objects assigned to hidden layers or on unused components.
If you unhide all, show all layers, delete all unwanted stuf and purge components, you shall be able to then purge the now unused materials.
Just ideas.
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Ya, I don't have anything hidden but I've got a pretty good deal of geometry. I ended up using Material Replacer to take care of it. I applied all of my junk materials to some planes and replaced them with a single bright pink material to see if I'd just missed them. Of the 15 or so I only found one that I'd missed. The only thing I can think of is that perhaps the others were on the backsides of faces from models I'd downloaded.
So I got it taken care of but the fact that such a simple task can be so problematic in SU is frustrating.
-brodie
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Materials can be applied to instances, groups, faces, edges and text etc...
So it's possible to have some rogue bits with a material you can't even see - e.g. a group/instance will not show its material IF none of its contents use the default material: also edges will usually display 'black' unless your Style says to use material, even if they are really 'red'.If you find you have a material that isn't being displayed but won't purge, then make it something bright [magenta!], then if you still can't see it when everything is set 'visible' you probably don't need it!
So delete that material in the Material Browser... and accept to use the default-material on any things that were using it... -
Good point about the possibility of edges and instances having materials as well.
In my case my main gripe is that often I literally can't delete materials from the material browser (see the original post for my clever anecdote). Perhaps I'm the lone sole who has this problem though.
-Brodie
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No, the lag of the context menu for the Material editor bits me as well on larger models. Very frustrating.
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The lag in the material context menu seems to be a feature of the last few releases. I don't recall it happening on earlier versions.
Maybe it has something to do with the change in the material setup. Skm files used to be a simple text list comprising an entire material collection; now they are individual material specs and images, all zipped up. It might be the case that peeking inside all those zips just takes much longer than scanning a csv list. -
Don't think so - because I get that on the In Model list as well - so everything should be loaded in memory.
And I'd think it should not be the case for the library either - as the library is read when you navigate to said location - and then the info should be in the model.
It appear to me - that the lag increases by the amount of geometry in the model. Which means that SU iterates the model geometry before displaying the menu. Possibly it's trying to determine if the material is used in the model - where it then enable or disable the menu items. (Just guessing.)
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Hopefully you've already figured this out, but I finally realized what was causing the right click on materials problem after pulling my hair out over this for ages. Change your Windows appearance setting from the fancy Aero to 'Basic' or the old windows style of visual theme while your using sketchup. Works a charm in windows 7!
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Had this problem all week. It has to be more then just amount of textures though,
Tried with large file with many textures, slow but I get delete .
Another file, less textures & smaller, I gave had ti give up on kept,greying out forever.
Wish there was away that you could edit the file and delete them with an editor. -
@jpalm32 said:
Wish there was away that you could edit the file and delete them with an editor.
http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=48933#p437121
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@digitalmarley said:
Hopefully you've already figured this out, but I finally realized what was causing the right click on materials problem after pulling my hair out over this for ages. Change your Windows appearance setting from the fancy Aero to 'Basic' or the old windows style of visual theme while your using sketchup. Works a charm in windows 7!
o_O Really?
I must try this. -
Let me know if that works for you. Works great for me, and hopefully you will feel as liberated as I did!
One other thing that can help with materials you cant purge which is a work-around I discovered for the above issue....usually the inability to delete materials is caused when materials get assigned to lines that make up your solids, that have different materials assigned to the faces, thus why you cant visually see the offensive material because its on a black line.
If you download and use the free cleanup script called "cleanup3 (to the 3rd power)" you can select suspicious groups or solids and use the checkbox that removes materials from edges. Be careful not to run the script on plain linework as it will delete what it thinks are stray edges whether you check that box or not.
Cheers
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@digitalmarley said:
Let me know if that works for you. Works great for me, and hopefully you will feel as liberated as I did!
Didn't work for me. Context-menu for materials are as slow as ever for models with lots of geometry.
What I've found is that the context menu gets slower the more entities have materials applied to them.Maybe we're talking about different issues?
@digitalmarley said:
One other thing that can help with materials you cant purge which is a work-around I discovered for the above issue....usually the inability to delete materials is caused when materials get assigned to lines that make up your solids, that have different materials assigned to the faces, thus why you cant visually see the offensive material because its on a black line.
If you download and use the free cleanup script called "cleanup3 (to the 3rd power)" you can select suspicious groups or solids and use the checkbox that removes materials from edges. Be careful not to run the script on plain linework as it will delete what it thinks are stray edges whether you check that box or not.
I might have heard of that plugin...
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@digitalmarley said:
Be careful not to run the script on plain linework as it will delete what it thinks are stray edges whether you check that box or not.
What?I cannot reproduce that. If I un-check Stray Edges option the edges remains.
(Can we continue this in the CleanUp thread? http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22920) -
I still have the problem. Can't delete, just greys out.
That line color thingy might be it.
Will do a test and change all line.
This sucks though! -
@thomthom said:
Didn't work for me. Context-menu for materials are as slow as ever for models with lots of geometry.
What I've found is that the context menu gets slower the more entities have materials applied to them.Maybe we're talking about different issues?
Sorry for the confusion, the issue I was addressing was the original problem of not being able to right click on materials in large models and delete them because the context menu only briefly flashes by then closes. This is a big problem for everyone it seems, but i swear that changing the windows 7 style appearance worked for me, even in my largest models with tonnes of warehouse junk. It still takes a few seconds for the context menu to show up but in windows 'basic' mode, it doesn't disappear! I think its something to do with the visual style applied to the sketchup windows and toolbar's because if you notice when you right click on them, it causes all your task windows to flash, which if you ask me, is whats closing the context menu. I lost track of who is even having the problem but maybe try different windows appearance options because you will love how smaller your files will be! don't know anything about the greyed out problem, never had that.
I did not realize cleanup3 was your plugin. I cannot live without it! Thank you so much. I was wrong, un-checking doesn't delete the lines. My mistake. I think i was being dramatic to make a point. Cheers!
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Could it be you've been hit my lots of redundant toolbar registry entries? I found once that even I had only about 20-25 toolbars the registry had 2000! -which made SU dead slow.
More details here: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=37990&p=335586&hilit=toolbar+registry#p335586
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Every time I have any problems, I copy each layer, have 2 copies of sketchup open, and 'paste in place' into a new sketchup file. Sometime I explode each layer or object to check them.
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This problem has been driving me nuts for years, in my largest models it was impossible to right click and delete materials from the SU Material Editor. A real pain when SU automatically creates solid colour materials for imported dwgs.
Digitalmarley's trick above works! I had to change my Windows 7 theme to Classic (Basic didn't work), and SU stills hangs for about 20 seconds (for each material!), but finally the right click context menu comes up and I can choose delete. Thank you Digitalmarley!
Trimble really need to sort out how SU handles materials, it's a terrible bottleneck./Jackson
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