I am wondering if there is an easy way to change SketchUp’s default material for faces only, while leaving all edges set to the default material.
Our company typically assigns a duplicate white material to all front and back faces, with all edges set to SketchUp’s default material. This allows us to have primarily white models, while having control over the edge color of groups and components via the paint bucket tool. In other words, when painting groups or components, the goal is for all faces to remain white, and only change the object’s edge color.
Our current workflow is to create geometry, select>deselect edges, assign the front/back face material as the duplicate white material via the entity info panel, and create the group/component.
If anyone has ideas for how to further streamline the workflow above, I would greatly appreciate it!
The default material is a style setting for faces only. Edge color is a separate setting in the style.
If you only want to apply materials to edges in the objects you can select just the edges and apply the material to them. Leave the faces painted with the default material.
Is there a reason for making the back face color the same as the front? If the model is made correctly there should be no exposed back faces anyway.
You could also apply the materials to the faces and edges together (easiest way to apply materials) and then use Hidden Line face style with the Edge Color set to By Materials. I did that here.
yeah, or even monochromatic + edge colour by material if you want to keep the light changes.
just create a style with these specific parameters, then you can simply model as you want and voilà.
Thanks for the quick reply! To clarify, the end goal is to be able to easily paint groups/components (outside of editing mode) and have the paint bucket tool change the object’s edge color only.
We often have a series of nested groups/components and need to quickly modify the edge color. Clicking into every single group/component, selecting all lines, and changing the color would be tedious, so we go the reverse route of changing the face material and leaving all linework set as the default material.
However, the edge color has a hierarchy and varies based on object type. For example, building edges might be shown as black, with secondary elements like furniture edges shown as a light gray. While the faces are primarily white, we have some specific instances (ex: glazing) where we use a different color/material for faces.
Thanks, this extension looks promising! While the faces in our models are primarily white, I forgot to mention that we do have some specific instances (ex: glazing) where we use a different face material.
Thanks again for the recommendation! Played around with ThruPaint and it comes very close to accomplishing what I’m looking for.
The major limitation is the paint edges tool only allows you to paint per individual object, which is probably a dealbreaker given the amount of nested groups/components we work with.
If you know of any similar extensions, please let me know and I’ll give them a shot!
Thanks! Forgot to mention in the original post that while the faces in our models are primarily white, we do have some specific instances (i.e. glazing) where we use different face materials.
Since we work with a variety of edge colors and materials, I am doubtful this can be managed through SketchUp’s built-in style tools, but there may be a third-party plugin or extension out there…
