Color By Layer

CMS 5PS

I normally apply materials to all of my entities so that they are visible in my design drawings. I am doing some scope drawings for a client, and for these particular sheets I am using Color By Layer to show the different scopes:

Grey for existing to remain.
Red for Demo.
Green for New.
Purple for Relocated (Old Location).
Teal for Relocated (New Location).

My question is this: Is there a way to set a scene to color only those "status" layers by layer, but show materials for objects not on those layers? I would like to show some background (ground & sky), to match my normal design drawings.

I'm using Sketchup Pro 2017.

Thanks.

Dave R

Color by Layer is an all or nothing sort of thing. Since all entities are on a layer (Layer 0 if not assigned to other layers) they will all get the color defined for that layer.

Are you making images to show the client? Or maybe a LayOut document? You could use multiple scenes and stack the exported images or the viewports in LayOut to create the look you want.

CMS 5PS

Thanks Dave. Yes, stacking viewports is the answer. Not sure why I didn't think of that.

I appreciate it!

JQL

You can also do some workaround that is hardly controlleable, but might work, depending on what you need.

You can define a texture as color by layer. Which means some layers might have the colors you need, while others can be textured. To do this clicl on the layer's color (on layer manager) and tick the use a texture dialog. You can then choose a texture on disk.

CMS 5PS

Thanks JQL. I don't think that would work for me, as doing so would give every surface in my model that texture. Which would work for my scope drawings, but will not work for the rest of the design drawings. I will need to play around with it a bit.

JQL

@cms 5ps said:

Thanks JQL. I don't think that would work for me, as doing so would give every surface in my model that texture. Which would work for my scope drawings, but will not work for the rest of the design drawings. I will need to play around with it a bit.

Well, now you know you can do that, so you can use it someday.