ThruPaint sounds perfect, going to try it now, thanks for the pbacot.

I make some of my models in GtkRadiant (used for q3, similar to hammer for hl1/source), and export as OBJ.

When I import my model into sketchup, every individual piece is grouped, and I have to explode it to texture it (without it taking forever).

If I have say, a desk on the floor (as in the screenshot), when I export (to any format) sketchup will take the bottom of the desk, and the floor, and delete intersecting parts, causing the creation of extra triangles to fit around this - I've tried to depict this in the screenshot.

If I did not explode my model, left it as groups, or components or whatever it is, this problem does not occur and the model stays exactly as is (desireable for me).

Is there a way I can either stop this behaviour, or automatically make every single bit a seperate group/component? (without doing it manually per quad)

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/OqnYBo2.png The red arrow points towards some of the new triangles that were created to intersect the bottom of the desk and the floor after exporting. (Surfaces are subdivided for vertex lighting purposes)

Thanks TIG! I will put in a good word for you if I die first.

Is there any way I can take a model, with a bunch of groups, and select only the faces that have a given material (with every face in the entire model regardless of group being checked)?

I have found several scripts, one in particular, "material_selection.rb" that almost do the job, except they check the material of a group, not the individual faces within the group, and add the entire group to the selection.

My model is made up of cubes, usually only 1 face on the cube has a texture, so I wanted to delete the other faces, but there are far too many to do it manually.

Any help greatly appreciated

Nevermind, I managed to botch together some ruby to reverse all faces for me. Thanks for your explanation much appreciated

Thnaks for the help. You where right Box. I have another problem though, my model initially is already grouped, so exporting immediatly works without the triangulation going mad, but all the faces are reversed. To reverse the faces I have exploded the model, then with all of them selected right clicked and clicked reverse faces. But exploding it ungroups everything, which leads to my original problem.

Is there a way of reversing faces without exploding? (The model is quite large). Selecting every group within the model and clicking edit -> 791 groups -> reverse faces does not work. If I select edit each group individually it does work, but there are 791 of them so I'd like to avoid it

My model is one large component or group I believe, so I exploded it and tried making parts of it into seperate components or groups, but It still did the same thing unfortunatly. Turning off the option to triangulate faces in the pro exporter makes no difference whatsoever sadly

Hi, I am relatively new to sketchup. I am trying to export a textured model as an obj file. The triangulation it performs is causing me major problems though.

I have a large plane acting as a floor, and I import a 'crate', so just a cube, and place it on the floor. Upon exporting, it removes a section from the floor plane exactly where the crate sits on it, so the floor plane now becomes loads of triangles, instead of simply splitting it from opposite corners into 2 triangles.

Even if I import a model that I have already triangulated into sketchup, upon exporting it still triangulates it again, becoming an absolute mess (again the above problem comes into play).

Here is an image of the problem

1. (bottom left)shows the flat plane, with peices dissapearing where I put a crate on top
2. (top)shows the model imported after triangulation, does not have the bits of floor missing
3. shows the final result of exporting either 1 or 2, it triangulates the model again regardless, by taking out touching geometry (I guess?) and becomes a mess

Does anyone know how to avoid this? I have tried both the exporter in pro, and an exporter I downloaded for the free version. I really want to export it as an obj exactly as it is in picture 2