I’m getting more involved in materials and production costings. One cost is paint finish. I’m wondering if there is a way to quickly calculate the outer surface area of a component using SketchUp.
Then I could put this figure against how much paint is used per component based on the manufacturers coverage guidelines…
Hi Ian. You could try TIG’s Component Reporter ++ which will give areas of materials. Or maybe Eneroth Material Area Counter.
There are some other extensions if you look at the EW and SCF Plugin Store and search for Area.
You could also add attributes to the components in your model to calculate the area of faces and then use the Report Generator although that might be too much work for what you get out of it.
Hi Dave thanks for the reply, they sound pretty promising I’ll take a look. I haven’t quite got to the stage yet but I’m thinking of ways to attack before the time comes. I’ll be putting the information in a spreadsheet (with lots more 
) to calculate production costs.
Hi
I can thoroughly recommend Estimator for Sketchup, (http://estimatorforsketchup.com/). It’s a paid extension, but it is very thorough for working out costings. It has customisable databases so it can be tailored to suit your needs.
Mike
Thanks for the suggestion. I have heard of estimator, it does look good. I think I’ll try the trial to see if it applies well to a production scenario.
Once I get to grips I think I’ll have free roam to change things up how I like. I’m open to options at the moment. But, the winds of change don’t always sit well with everyone, we’ll see.
Right-clicking on a material in the Materials browser shows you the total area of the material in your model. Note that materials applied on groups and components are counted for both sides of faces.
That’s a nifty way to get a quick figure, I hadn’t noticed that before. Yes I see what you mean, be sure to apply materials to the faces of the components. Otherwise the area is doubled if the material is applied to the component container as front and back faces are counted.
It is strange that, since the beginning of SketchUp, this hasn’t been picked up by the developers, maybe because there were area-extensions since version 4.
Anyway, an Area-attribute in Generate Report would be on my wish list (like Quantities), as well as a distinction between different units in the entity info (mm for length, m2 for area, HL for volume)
And since the icon is a bucket, why not have an extra attribute, l/m2, set how many liters you have, and see when the bucket is empty while painting!
(Or is this covered with an extension, as welll)
This strongly depends on the brush you use.
Note that the area on the wrapper is correct, not double.
After exploding both sides of the faces inherit the paint which double the area.
edit: the area on the component’s wrapper is the same as when you later explode the component.
All default (unpainted) faces inherit the wrapper’s material on both sides, front and back, so double of what you would expect.
I create a 1m cube, make it a component and then add material to the container. The area for material reports 12m sq not the 6m sq of the front faces only. If I then explode the component, the front and back faces then inherit the material and thus the material still reports 12m sq.
Alternatively:
I create a 1m cube, make it a component and add material to the front faces inside the container (as I usually would). The area for material reports the 6m sq correctly. If I explode the component the material assignment remains the same with only the front faces having material assigned. The material area still sits at a correct 6m sq.
I don’t actually add material to my models that often, it’s more of a secondary thing for me. Adding the material is more of an extra step in reaping the information from the surfaces.
In an ideal world I’d like to run a selection box, hit a button and then the surface area of all the front faces in the selection would be reported. A choice of units would be useful too as I model in mm but would like the surface area to be calculated in meters without changing the model units.
I haven’t had time to investigate all avenues, but that’s what I think would be very simple.
I went over the thing again very carefully after your comment to check. The “correct vogue” application of materials to the front faces gives the intended result.
Well, I’ve investigated a few more options including the ones from DaveR.
TIG Component reporter does a nice job of it exporting material area (including default) for each component to csv. It does work with a selection, but I have to convert that output to metres from mm (or change model info). Not the end of the world but it works pretty well.
Eneroth material area counter gives a quick calculation of all the material area (including default) in the model within SketchUp. The result is double the figure I would be looking for as it appears to count the front and back faces. There can be no “selection” to choose from however, as it counts all of the material in the model as it is. Again, the units are reported in model units, not the metres I would like.
Two nice extensions, but then I accidentally fell upon “Report on Areas” part of Fredo Tools
It works with selections, the units and decimal separator can also be chosen to fine tune the output within SketchUp which can be exported to CSV.
The selection can be a choice of three ways, by material, by layers or by container which also reports individual areas of components within the selection as well as the total area…
Or simply “by material” for the current selection for a quick total works nicely…
With the units conversion and the versatility on the whole, this is the best (for me at least) I have come across so far.
just be careful the material you are measuring is not also applied to the backface unintentionally…
