Import collection of textures Mac os

simonoz

Hi
I am using SU version 8 for mac OS 10.6.8
I have located a collection of colourbond textures (which are .skm files) at this site:
http://www.steelselect.com/content/viewresource.php?id=4586
The site gives clear instructions as to how to import the collection. However, the instructions seam to apply only to windows version of SU. In step 2 one is instructed to click on the "details" icon, and select "add collection to favorites", but I can not find the details icon, my materials selection window looks nothing like the windows one. Is there a work around for the method shown, or is it completely different for Mac?
thanks Simon

Gaieus

I am not a Mac user and know that if something is completely different on the Mac, the materials browser is. Here are some pointers from the SU Help:
http://support.google.com/sketchup/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=142368
and
http://support.google.com/sketchup/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=142374
where at the bottom, it also mentions this library (where you can copy those skm's):

Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Google SketchUp 8/SketchUp/

Now on the Windows system, we have different subfolders in the corresponding place for the different material libraries.

simonoz

yes I had found that folder. I can drop the skm file into it, but even after restarting SU I can not find it in the materials lists...

RichardJ

Hi simonoz
We do a package for mac for specific rollformers. This link is for Lysaght products:
http://www.steelselect.com/content/viewresource.php?id=4589

there is a help section at the bottom of the page. Macs don't support multiple folders
Regards
Richard
SteelSelect

simonoz

Thanks very much for your post Richard.
The files did not appearing in the list to start with, then I quit Su, rebooted and all was good.....
cheers
Simon

mwm5053

Good info thanks

gtuttle

Ok Guys where on the Mac is the Application Support/SketchIp 2013 folder. I don't have on listed??
What am I missing.?

TIG

Ruby Console:
Sketchup.find_support_file('')
Sketchup.find_support_file('Plugins')
Sketchup.find_support_file('Materials')
etc

To see the Lib files... in the Finder hold down the Option key to add them to its dropdown...

jeff hammond

@gtuttle said:

Ok Guys where on the Mac is the Application Support/SketchIp 2013 folder. I don't have on listed??
What am I missing.?

it's inside the .app contents (somewhere you generally shouldn't be digging around in).. i guess more to the point- what are you trying to do?

once you save a user defined material from within sketchup, a new folder will appear at:
~(user)/Library/Application Support/SketchUp 2013/SketchUp/Materials

AndrewS

Sorry for jumping into this thread unexpectedly.

Overview
We had a discussion going in this thread about where to find the 2014 materials folder on the Mac. Jeff Hammond then brought up some bugs about materials handling there. Someone else mentioned wanting a utility to migrate materials from one version of SketchUp to another. I was going to respond in-line, but felt like it hijacked the thread too much, so I switched over to this thread for my response.

Ideology
Technically speaking, it's best to avoid mixing user-created data with vendor-provided data. So, once you install the SketchUp application onto your computer, if it ships with any default content provided by us, it should live inside the app bundle, here:
[pre:1zpu56sv]/Applications/SketchUp 2014/SketchUp.app/Contents/Resources/Content/Materials/[/pre:1zpu56sv]while all materials created or changed by the you should really live in the user's folder, here:
[pre:1zpu56sv]~/Library/Application Support/SketchUp 2014/SketchUp/Materials/[/pre:1zpu56sv]

Bugs
Here are the two bugs we discussed in the other thread that impact what I'm about to say:

If you create a new material inside one of the default collections shipped with SketchUp, that material is improperly created inside of the materials folder that lives in the app bundle instead of putting it somewhere in your user folder. This is a bug because either SketchUp should disallow you creating any new stuff within the default collections, or it should invisibly create a like-named folder in your user location and store the file there such that when the materials browser is loaded, the contents of both folders are merged for display to you.
If you go to the trouble to use Finder or Terminal to create a directory tree inside of your own user materials folder and fill it with SKMs, that folder will only show up in the materials browser if its name does not conflict with the names of the default collections. For instance, "Wood" and "Metal" are examples of default folder names that must be avoided. Instead, use a name like "My Wood" or "_Wood" for all of the custom folders you make, thereby avoiding any conflicts.

Good News
As an aside, I'd like to start by giving you some good news. Upon digging into the bug tracking system, I see that we have several bugs grouped together into a major topic called "rationalize shipped content vs. user content". This includes a bunch of materials bugs, including those mentioned above. I think this might get traction soon, so though I can make no guarantees, hopefully we'll find some improvements to materials handling in an upcoming release.

Who's Affected
Now, with the background out of the way, here's what I'm trying to address:

Some of you are on SketchUp 8 or 2013 and have already created a bunch of materials through SketchUp, which got created incorrectly in the App bundle. Now I'm telling you not to ever modify the app bundle and you're wondering how on earth you should migrate the SKMs to SketchUp 2014 if that's the case.
Others of you have already migrated materials to SketchUp 2014 by putting stuff in the app bundle and now you want to know how to "repair" it.
Still others may have tried to migrate materials into SketchUp 2014 by copying from the SketchUp 8 or 2013 bundles into the 2014 user directory, but not all of the materials are showing up and you don't know what to do about it.

Workaround to Migrate Materials
I've come up with a workaround that might work for some of you and I wanted to post it. Maybe someone will want to write a plugin to help with migration, now that this info is being explained fully.

Here's the basic idea of how to migrate:

Close SktechUp if it's running.
If it doesn't already exist, create a Materials folder in the user's directory, at ~/Library/Application Support/SketchUp 2014/SketchUp/Materials/.
For every version of SketchUp that has materials you want to migrate from the .app bundle into your user directory, just copy all of the collection subdirectories from the Materials folder of each app into the user's material folder.
To prevent any conflicts between the names of the collections in the user directory and the app bundle, systematically rename every subdirectory within the user's materials folder, either adding "My" or "_" before the name. This will guarantee no conflicts.
Launch SketchUp and open the materials browser. Verify that you now have the same list of default collections (like Wood, Metal, etc.), as well as all of your custom-named directories.
From now on, when you create a new material, be careful to create it within one of the collections with the "_" or "My" designation so that you don't pollute the app bundle again.
This step is unnecessary, but if you really want to clean things up to be nice and tidy, you can now go delete the Materials folder from the SketchUp bundle and then copy a new one into its place from the SketchUp installer bundle. This will ensure the directory contents are exactly as they were when we shipped them.
Another unnecessary, but possible step, is to run a diff between the content we ship and that which is in the "_" or "My" user directories and remove the duplicate copies from the user folder so that there are no duplicates.

Quick and Dirty Migration Example
As a brief example of how one might go about migrating content from the 2013 app bundle into the 2014 user directory, I created the following one-line script that can be run from Terminal.app. Please note I only just threw this together and so you may find it doesn't work quite right. You've been warned that it could cause some problems. It is intended to find all materials collections within the 2013 app bundle and copy them to the 2014 user directory, renaming them with an underscore in front of the name to prevent collisions.

[pre:1zpu56sv]find /Applications/SketchUp\ 2013/SketchUp.app/Contents/Resources/Content/Materials -type d -d 1 | while read i; do ddir="$HOME/Library/Application Support/SketchUp 2014/SketchUp/Materials/_$(basename "$i")" && mkdir -p "$ddir" && cp -Rf "$i/" "$ddir"; done[/pre:1zpu56sv]

Closing
Yes, we need to fix the materials bugs. Yes we hope to someday create a migration utility to handle this more easily or automatically. I'm sorry it's not ready yet. I'm sorry it's a pain in the neck. I hope this knowledge helps people somehow.

Andrew

jeff hammond

awesome. thanks for the detailed post and instructions.

this topic has been coming up from time to time and the community didn't really have a way to direct those with problems to a more detailed explanation and advise.. instead it was more of "well, this works for me" type of stuff (which can be fine in many scenarios.. it's just that in this case, the application bundle itself comes into play and i personally don't feel confident enough to advise others to go digging around in there )

anyway, i'll now just direct those with material migration issues to this thread.

hopefully this can get sorted out eventually but for now, i think your suggestions will do just fine.