How to change materials sample cube to rectangular flat image in SU 2025? I saw it somewhere, but can’t find anymore. Does somebody know?
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At the moment there isn’t a way to make an advanced material show anything but that cube. There are plans to add other preview shape options.
For any non-advanced materials, those should show up as the normal flat image. If you are working on a model that might need a mixture of old flat materials and new PBR materials, you could go into Settings, Graphics, and uncheck the options to automatically enhance materials. Then those ones will keep the old rectangle thumbnail.
Ok. Those cubes make it hard to see what the material actually is.
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That complaint has been raised pretty much since when 2025 was released.
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I’ll amend that… I can’t stand the cubes! Please give me back my old material library…
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This complaint needs to keep being raised until the issue is fixed. I like the idea of advanced material options, but I hate the cubes. There should be a toggle option: “A: see the actual material” or “B: see a stupid cube”
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How are these plans coming along? The cubes are too small and vague.
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The Windows version for 2026 does give you the choice of whether to show a rectangle or a cube. There is ongoing work needed before the Mac version will have that option.
OK, good to hear somebody is working on it.
If Trimble think it’s important to highlight which one is PBR (I don’t) then just add a small dot or asterisk in the top-right corner of that particular flat swatch.
I assumed it was obvious, but the primary purpose of a swatch should be to easily identify and distinguish different materials, i.e. big enough to see the wood grain and tell that apart from a gravel swatch or solid brown swatch. Currently it’s impossible to tell the difference.
These tiny cubes are useless, and the material names in the Sketchup Content Library are also not helpful. i.e. “veneer_01”, “veneer_02”, etc. Why not use actual wood names, i.e. “pine”, “oak”, etc.
You may have missed that my point was that the negative reaction to the change was immediate and loud, yet nothing has happened.