Extended Colour By Layer

[samyell77]

Hi all,
Im wondering if there is any way of extending the functionality of the colour by layer feature of Sketchup. I use a lot of pre-made components and generally build layers into these components to make organising my drawings quicker and easier. The issue with this is that when I want to use colour by layer I end up having to do a lot of tweaking of layer colours to get things looking / working right.

Colour by layer seems to work by looking for the lowest level of layer in a component. Is there any way of reversing this so that it looks for the highest level in the layer hierarchy?

Ive put a simple example below:

Lets say I made a bike and put the various parts on different layers as below:

Group of all bike parts - on layer 'Bike' - RED
Handlebars - on layer 'Handlebars' - GREEN
Frame - on layer 'Frame' - YELLOW
Wheels - on layer 'Wheels' - BLUE

At the moment when I do clour by layer it will ignore the fact that the grouped bike parts have been put on the layer 'Bike' and will show the wheels in blue, the frame in yellow and the handlebars in green. The only way I can get the whole bike to appear in red is to change the layer colour properties of the layers Handlebars, Frame and Wheels to be RED.

I'd like to know if there is a way to make colour by layer show the colour of the highest level layer and display its colour for all the objects on that layer - regardless of the colour properties of the other layers below them in the layer hierarchy. In this instance Id like the whole bike to appear red in colour by layer mode and not have to change the lower level layers' colours.

Alternatively is there any way of doing 'colour by group' as a style?

Any help much appreciated.
Thanks
Sam