@thomthom said:

Yes? The argument defaults to false - so the UI isn't disabled and you won't get the performance gain. The argument need to be true in order to get a performance gain.

I wonder if I have misunderstood something here - or maybe you misunderstood me?

Thanks thomtthom. It is me being an idiot!

Yes, you are of course right. I got the logic inverted. Changes made and the updated version has been uploaded.

I only got time to work on this again this weekend. Implemented all thomthom's tips, thanks again thomthom!

Only one I did not do is 5

@thomthom said:

5. Model.start_operation will be much faster if you set the optional disable_ui flag to true.

As the docs says the flag defaults to false anyway.

I also did the following extra bits:

1. Changed the main hash keys to symbols instead of strings - Again to avoid String comparisons. I ran a few tests and this actually makes a big difference for large strings, but in practice probably not so much here as the material names are usually not so long

2. Now shipping as a .rbz file for easier installing

3. Various other small performance and code complexity enhancements

Works OK on a model of mine that has around 500k entities.

Has anyone tried the previous version out yet?

Hi thomthom, thanks for the suggestions they are most welcome! As you might have gathered from looking at the code, I have never coded in Ruby before, so my use is not exactly idiomatic and the SU API is also new to me. I will implement your suggestions later in the week when I have some time.

@thomthom said:

(Btw, what's up with the semi-colons?)

Probably giving away my age but my background is in structured languages (Pascal, Modula 2, C++ and later Java) so I feel naked without the semi-colons... I find it harder to read the code without them and Ruby don't seem to mind.

@bob james said:

There is a bogus blue download button that sends you to a bad place. Really bad.
Clicking on the file name leads not to a zip download, but to a page that looks like an ftp site.

The arrow to the right is the "real" download button for the zip file.

I apologise Bob! I had a "Comments" widget from PNXE at the bottom of my pages to allow guests to leave comments. This widget is free but supported by adds and I see some of these adds now have "Down load" buttons, which is very annoying. I have now removed the widget at the bottom of the pages. Will need to figure out another way for users to leave comments.

And yes you are right the little arrow to the right of the zip file downloads the file. Clicking the file name link directly browses the content.

Please do let me know what you think! Given that people now cannot leave comments on my blog anymore I might open a thread just for feedback on this Plugin.

Cheers,

Myhand.

@unknownuser said:

[FEATURE REQUEST]

It's a useful plugin, until I found it, I had to remove all materials from selection using This Plugin, then reassign materials only to geometry inside group/component -often I have different materials on faces.

I would like some features to this plugin: Now, with so many plugins, the Plugins Menu gets really crowded, so submenus are welcomed. So, I was thinking if you could add a feature to this plugin to remove all materials, something like this:

REMOVE MATERIALS
>Remove CG Materials
>Remove ALL Materials
In this way, instead of having two entries for those two plugins, I would have one single menu with two child options.

Also, if the inputbox could be disabled, to speed-up the usage. I never replaced CG material using the inputbox, so for me is just a unnecessary mouse click Actually, I'm curious if anyone uses that feature.

Thank you.

This plugin should do what you want: http://www.keepingmyhandin.com/Downhome/Sketchup/material_maintenance_2

After trying to clean up a fairly large model and finding it hard to figure out which materials to replace, I have updated the Material_Maintenance plugin to include the following features:

• Shows material thumbnails to help identify materials
• You can now choose if you want to change materials in:
  • The current selection
  • The whole model (does not include component definitions)
  • Component definitions.
• Is much faster
• You can now identify where materials have been used in the model by:
  • Construction Lines
  • Highlighting the faces and component instances with selected materials
• Selecting all entities with the selected materials applied.
• Allows you to list components that contain the selected materials in their definitions

You can download it here:

http://www.keepingmyhandin.com/Downhome/Sketchup/material_maintenance_2

Thank you TIG, will go and look there. Performance was very impressive on my old GTX285 card, just that I could not export the model properly. Also tried Bloom Unit last night and not so impressed. Rendering speed significantly slower than Octane, and as they charge per hour you will soon rack-up costs.

Now looking forward to Thea with GPU support!!!

Updated to version 2.2 with bug fixes for MAC and large models - Download available at same location below

Updated to version 2.1 with thomthom's coding tips - Download available at same location below

I ran into problems with material management when I started to do PR rendering of my planned home extension. Exports took long and assigning material properties became unmanageable. I also had many materials that looked similar, but had slightly different properties.

I tried the various material clean/replace plugins out there but found that even though they all were good at some things, none quite did what I needed.

So I wrote yet another variation or the material management plugins, but one that does exactly what I want it to do, I did it partly because I needed it and partly to learn how to do plugins.

• It allows you to select multiple materials you want to replace from a list
• You can select which entities and faces you want to update.
• Shows material thumbnails to help identify materials
• You can now choose if you want to change materials in:
  • The current selection
  • The whole model (does not include component definitions)
  • Component definitions
• You can now identify where materials have been used in the model by:
  • Construction Lines
  • Highlighting the faces and component instances with selected materials
• Selecting all entities with the selected materials applied.
• Allows you to list components that contain the selected materials in their definitions

You can download it here:

http://www.keepingmyhandin.com/Downhome/Sketchup/material_maintenance_2

@unknownuser said:

Hi!
I`m using SU + Octane, and it works great for me. There are two usefull plugins available from Octane site. (made by TIG) Octane OCM batch export and Octane exporter.
There were some problems in the past with the materials (they were mixing), now it works fast and flawlessly.

Hi KJC,

I have tried Octane renderer with Sketchup but the model export does not work well. I loose faces and materials. It appears to still be in Beta. Which version are you using and where did you find the plugins?

Are there any special parameters I should set for Sketchup?

Any help much appreciated!