Can I import a color swatch file from Adobe Illustrator?

I have a custom color pallet, actually colors that came from Sherwin Williams to use with Adobe Illustrator that I would like use in SketchUp. Adobe saves these color libraries as .ASE files. I downloaded one of these files from Sherwin Williams, and I’ve picked out the colors we are using in our project. I would like to import them into SketchUp. I don’t want to have to manually pick the colors and name them in SketchUp, which is the only advice I’m reading anywhere.

Thanks in advance!
-Don

Have you looked to see if these Sherwin Williams colors might already exist as materials in the 3D Warehouse?

There’s no direct import to SketchUp from Illustrator for colors. How many colors are you talking about here?

Yeah, DaveR, they do: S-W color pallettes.

I have these things on my hard disk already because someone posted the actual skm files on the old Google forum years back. I presume the ones on 3DW are the same files, or from the same source. Really hard to say where they originally came from.

-Gully

OT: if you read the skm’s document.xml it will most likely have the original computer path on it…

No soap, which is an Americanism for “no.”

-G

Thanks! I can’t tell right off hand if my colors are in there. Why is it divided up so much?

Here is the page from Sherwin Williams Downloadable Color Palettes - Sherwin-Williams

You’d have to ask those who made them. I think most of them are divided up by general color or hue.

The colors are divided into six groups. Each group contains dozens or hundreds of individual named and numbered colors.

-Gully

How can I search for a specific number? or color name?

Is there a way in Sketchup to enter colors as a hexadecimal code? such as
cc2735ff?

What’s the best way to create a color library from the colors in my
Illustrator document?

What format are color libraries saved in?

Thanks.

Donald L. Drennan

Dude, that’s a lot of questions. Let’s see.

Each color corresponds to a .skm (SketchUp Material) file. The six libraries correspond to six appropriately named folders (directories), which I have shown above. The folders contain the .skm files, one per color. The skm files are named thus: SW [number] [color name].skm. For example, SW 6011 Chinchilla.skm. You can open the folders from inside of SU using the Details Menu > Open or Create Collection. You can thereupon list the colors in the Materials browser, thus:

A .skm file is actually a zip file with the extension renamed to skm. You can open them with WinZip or the equivalent. Each skm file contains a set of xml data files defining the color or texture along with the original image file in the case of a texture, along with a thumbnail for display as a swatch in the Material browser.

As far as I know, you can’t import your Illustrator colors. You’d have to recreate them one by one by entering the color codes, either in RGB, HSB, or HLS. There is a plugin that will allow you to make a folder full of skms from a folder full of jpgs.

-Gully