Could somebody give me info or point me to info how the paint bucket works in terms of applying a material to a component. Sometimes I can’t paint bucket a whole component in one click and I wonder why that is. One of the things seem to be when a component has been adjusted with one of the Solid tools. For example: component X with color A trimmed by component Y with color B. Component X can’t get painted in one click. The faces that are affected by the trim have now color B.
I would like to understand better how this works and if there are ways around this.
Painting the component from the outside affects faces lacking a material of their own. Generally it’s good to leave the inside of a component unpainted to allow for it to be painted as a whole from the outside.
The native Solid Tools are stupid and don’t honor material inheritance, but instead apply materials directly to faces when it was previously applied to the component as a whole.
Try the Eneroth Solid Tools plugin instead, or one of several other improved Solid Tool plugins, which don’t either turn your components into groups, or better respect the material assignments.
The root of the issue is understanding the hierarchy of the geometry. Anything painted on a face will override anything painted on a group or component.
This is a useful feature as long as you understand it.
Take a car model as an example. You can paint all the details at face level, the glass, the window trim, the door handles, the tyres etc but leave the bodywork default, then you can paint the Group any colour you want and only the bodywork will take the colour. This allows you to change the car paint with a couple of clicks without altering the details.
As mentioned above, (i know I’m repeating this) solid tools screws with this because it takes the group material and assigns it to the faces rather than leaving it at group level. Hence the problem you are seeing.