Thursday, September 19, 2013

Replace Materials - but keep the name

As part of our Material Styles project, we needed a quick way to place library materials into a model without changing the name of the material.

This is valuable if you prefer to have functional material names, like Lumber 4x4, which you use for reporting and want to change the color without changing the material or if you Material Styles - which replaces all materials in a model by name, but needs to preserve the original names.

Map-Replace Materials is a function on the Place Material Wizard which lets you select a material from a library - or another material in your model and 'Map' it to a material in your model - replacing the color, texture and other attributes without changing the name of the current material.



First select a material using the left and center pane, then select one or materials in the model in the right hand pane.

Click Assign to assign the material in the center pane to the materials in the right hand pane.



Repeat this as often as desired to map all the material you want.

Notice that we are assigning the Red color to the lower cabinet base and doors which are currently white.

When you click Apply all the material assignments will be applied to the model



This makes it easy to make multiple color and texture assignments, and apply them by material name to your model - keeping the existing material names.

Beta Test

This is currently only available for testing in IRender nXt. If there is interest we will find a way to release it as part of RpTools rather than IRender nXt.

Download the latest version of IRender nXt to see it in action.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Functional Material Names and Material Styles

The normal SketchUp user sets materials on object by selecting a material from the library and then placing in on a object. When you select materials from a library and drop them onto objects in your SketchUp model, then often the name refers to the material - such as Red Brick - rather than the use of the material - such as Outside Wall.

If you create objects whose materials have functional names, such as Ceiling, Table Top, Floor, etc. Then you can assign materials from a library to these materials - without changing the material name - using Replace Material or you can replace all the materials at once using Material Styles.

Example


 Here is a SketchUp Kitchen model with material names which  are functional. ('Base Cabinets', 'Lower Cabinet Doors'), instead of descriptive ('Red', 'Wood_Floor'), and one set of material defined.

Load Style.jpg

A different Material Style is then selected from the Wizard, and when Load Selected Style is clicked, the materials in the model are re-mapped to the materials in the saved style.

Load Style 2.jpg

Want to learn more?

See: Material Styles

And try the latest version of  IRender nXt to see it in action.