How to split a building model and colorize each piece

Florescu

Hello.
I am using SketchUp 2013 Pro in the field of architecture.
I stumbled upon a situation and I did not know what to do. I had to split the model of the building in 2200 smaller pieces and after that I had to be able to highlight or to shade each of the pieces in order to track some progress.
I was wondering if there is other solution than building each block separately, maybe a plugin or other technique I did not know.
Thank you in advance

Box

You might what to explain what it is you are really wanting to do, what result are you looking for?
There may be a simple way to do what you want if we understand it properly.
There is a plugin for solar work for example that will show graduations of thermal properties.
There is a plugin, voxelise that will subdivide a solid into predefined cubes.
There is a plugin for graduated painting of components.

A bit more info would help to push you in the right direction.

Florescu

I have to build a model of a building for a presentation. The presentation's purpose is to raise funds.
For example if we look at the top view of the building we will see a rectangle. This rectangle should be divided into 2200 smaller squares. Each of this square combined with the height of the building will form a prism. The result will be the whole volume divided into 2200 prisms.
Each of these prisms should be grouped in separated blocks and when people will donate money to the event, I want to change the appearance of blocks (shaded, highlighted, coloured etc). So blocks' appearance needs to be changed separatedly.
The purpose of the final volume is to look like a 3D graphic of the current donations.
Finally there are 2 main problems:

How to split the volume into 2200 prisms because there will be rooms inside and sometimes the program might not see it as a solid.
How to separately change the appearance of blocks in order to show the people who donated and the remaining slots.

Thank you for your time and I hope I explained it right

Box

It sounds like one way you could do it would be by constructing your model in solids then use voxeliser to cube it. You may need to accept some loss of detail but the building should be able to be fairly well represented.
Once you have the cubes they can be grouped, painted and labeled as you want.

Attached is a very simple version showing that a building structure can be a solid and be cubed.

Florescu

I downloaded the plugin and I'll see if it can help me. Thanks a lot

Box

You could look at Tig's Slicer5 as well. It can cut various ways, but also needs solids.
I think the main issue you will face is the need for the model to be either a solid or made of solids that you can split. So it's worth looking at how you might construct a shell of your building for this graphic presentation.

Rich O Brien

There's a snippet somewhere that creates a coloured cube in all rgb values.

Florescu

Thank you for your help.
Tig's Slicer is ok..i have tried it. But it will be a complex model.
I will try to model it in ArchiCad then to export in in SketchUp even though it will slow the computer a bit.
Hope i'll manage.
Thanks a lot!

Box

You're welcome, best of luck with it.