Best way to make a "Wallcoverings Plan"?

[Nathank9000]

In some projects, I need to make a “wallcoverings plan”, a top-down view that shows which walls get what paint, wallpaper, tiles, etc.

Something along these lines:

Basically a separate layer with manually drawn shapes that get a copy of whichever texture is on the wall (ignore the polka-dots, they’re there as a placeholder until we actually choose a wallpaper):

Is there an easier way to do this, other than manually drawing shapes and copying the wall textures? It gets a little ridiculous on larger projects.

Whether it’s a plugin (even paid, I’m OK with it, the time savings will be worth it), or simply some method I can’t think of… or maybe another approach that removes this necessity altogether?

Looking for any advice! Thanks in advance!

[bmike]

Maybe ProfileBuilder - but not sure.

You’d use it to draw your walls from the start, so not a solution for current work, only new work.

You’d still have to manually paint the surfaces, but I think there are plugins that will let you paint ‘through’ the component or group to an individual face - that would speed things up.

[rtches]

This is my latest workflow that I’m testing.

• I always draw the walls with Profile Builder, which allows me to assign a material and a tag to each one. I used to have one tag for various types of walls, but now I think that even though I may have many tags, it’s better to have one per wall type (grouped in folders). Each tag has the color I need in the legend of my drawings. Also let me to use Quantifier for a basic Quantity TakeOfff.

• I run a Ruby script that extracts the name of the tag and its color (I only use solid colors because it’s faster for me).

model = Sketchup.active_model
layers = model.layers
layers.each { | layer | puts layer.name + " " + layer.color.to_s}

• Once I have the list with all the colors, I ask ChatGPT to generate a JPG file with the color and its name on the right. I obtain multiple files like this:

• I also attach a LayOut Mark in case I want to Tag each wall in LayOut (for example “P1ca”.

• I then put those files in a layout scrapbook and use them whenever I need to.
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• In Layout, I just need to overlay a view with the color by tag, and that’s it.

If you add another color, you just need to ask ChatGPT to generate the color. I’ve saved the prompt to use it whenever I need it. Here it is (translated from Spanish, apologies if it’s not correct):

Could you generate a JPG file for me based on the list I will provide, which contains a descriptive text and a reference to a color in the format Color(0, 0, 0, 0)? The file should contain a rectangle of that color with a width twice its height, and to the right, a rectangle four times the width of the first rectangle and the same height, with a white background and the descriptive text of the color in Arial font, with a height equivalent to 1/4 of the rectangle’s height. The file name should be the descriptive text that appears before the color, and please compress all the files into a single archive.

[Nathank9000]

@rtches - definitely something to think about, but it’s not exactly solving my problem. I have basically a 3-part workflow:

1.) Assign wallcovering types to walls. Bathrooms get tiles on the vanity wall, and either paint (if cheap project) or less expensive / plain tile on the other walls. Bedrooms will typically have wallpaper all around. Certain rooms will have a “showcase” wall that gets an expensive wallpaper, and other walls that get more muted wallpaper. And so on.

This is important because:

A.) Tiles require a different type of wall structure (Durock or Cement Board instead of Sheetrock), so knowing that certain walls will be “reinforced” gives the contractor a head-start.

B.) Floor tiles versus parquet versus LVT also require different prep & labor.

C.) This process lets me generate a list of the required materials, for the designer to choose. So for example, I may have Paint Color 1 for most walls, Paint Color 2 for kids’ bedrooms, Paint Color 3 for bathrooms / wet walls (waterproof paint); Wallpaper 1, Wallpaper 2; Tiles 1, Tiles 2, Tiles 3, Tiles 4.

So at this stage, we don’t know which exact materials we need, but we know how many different ones and their area (so we can estimate the costs).

2.) Once the designer chooses the actual materials, I can create them in Sketchup and assign them to the “designated” materials I chose in Step 1.

I’m still keeping the colorful / patterned designations, because a lot of times, it’s very hard to see the difference between similar paints or tiles, so a “light gray” and a “1% darker gray” would look the same, but their assigned colors on the plan would be blue and purple, for example, so it’s obvious they’re different.

3.) I use a plugin like Report On Areas to generate the list of colors & materials.

And then I have a plan like this, where I know, without even looking at the cross-reference, that there are 2 murals (polka-dotted walls) and they’re different because it’s a different color polkadots, 2 wallpaper walls but it’s the same wallpaper, and a bunch of walls with just paint.

[bmike]

That is why I suggested Profile Builder… you can create wall types with that rectangle drawn just above the floor plane, and then you can come in and paint them later. You can set it up so that gets a Tag and then you could toggle it off for specific views.

At least the drawing part would be (somewhat) automated.

[Nathank9000]

but I think there are plugins that will let you paint ‘through’ the component or group to an individual face

LOL, I actually don’t want that - I need to paint the exact faces that will be painted in reality, otherwise it will screw up the count, i.e. a 1000-SF object painted through will be reported as using 2000 SF of paint… plus whatever it takes on the edges.

[bmike]

Yes, I know - that’s why I said:

@bmike

paint ‘through’ the component or group to an individual face

You can paint a surface without actually opening the group component - it would save you lots of clicks and time…

Here is one I have used (a long time ago):

SketchUp Extension Warehouse

Here is another:

SketchUp Extension Warehouse

[rtches]

With Profile Builder you can switch later the type of wall by other.
Start with the basic ones and change them later

[Nathank9000]

Oh OK, that’s cool, that IS a time-saver, versus having to open each group. Thank you!