Prior to moving to SU2017, I have been migrating my components, materials, etc. I noticed that I had “Materials” in a couple different locations, and began to compare the contents of the folders. In the sub-folder of “Colors”, in these two different locations, I have a collection of 106 files in one and 310 files in the other.
Folder-A (106) begins with “Color A01.skm” and ends with “Color_M09.skm”. Folder-B (310) begins with “Color_000.skm” and ends with “Color_L25.skm”. Although the collections have some colors with the same name, they are clearly different colors.
I have been copying Materials and Components thru soooo many versions of SketchUp, I’m sure I must not have deleted an older version’s folder, and I’m trying to do a clean-up before moving forward. Any thoughts, suggestions or hints on how and where to store Components, Materials and other items that I would like to migrate to the next newest version of SketchUp?
I would put those into a folder called SketchUp Assets or something. Make sub-folders for Components, Materials, and Styles. Put the folder some place you can easily access and then point Sketchup at the appropriate folders.
You still haven’t completed your profile. How about doing that/
Completing your profile with operating system, graphics card and so on can be useful in helping you get your questions answered. And it really isn’t an invasion of your privacy. No one will judge you just because you are running SketchUp on a Commodore 64.
Speaking of hand positioning, I was unaware of it until I re-examined my Avatar… others might not realize that is supposed to be a guitar that I’m holding. oops… I’ve had that Avatar for years, and never noticed. Do you think I should I change it?
Dave
Thanks for your suggestions. After I clean up my folders, I will store them on my hard drive and point to them in SketchUp. Is that how you do it, then add components and materials to them? Or do you keep the SketchUp Libraries separate from your own growing library?
I don’t do anything to the native libraries except for one. Since I create my own style for my default template, I copy that style into the Default styles library. Otherwise I don’t modify native materials or components libraries. Most of the materials libraries I make are for woodgrain materials and I separate them by species. So in my materials folder I have sub folders for Ash, Cherry, Maple, Teak, Walnut, and so on. For components that I keep for reuse, I have some by what they are such as knobs and pulls, hinges, screws, etc. I also have some libraries that are specific to clients so those libraries get the client name. The styles I create get sorted by type such as pencil, ink, brush, etc.
This may shock you, but I’m not very organized… but if someone could tell me “where to stick it”, my life would be so much less complicated. Do you know of anyone that has an example structure of how to organize typical libraries? I understand that we all have specific libraries for certain clients or projects. But I do such a wide range of work, I need some way of knowing where to store certain generic components when I come across a new one, or create one.
You can look at the sorts of components and textures you make and decide how to categorize them. This can be a fluid sort of thing, too. And, if you want, you can put the same materials in several different folders. For example, you might have a moldy bread texture that goes in Bread textures and Blue molds. You can also add folders as categories come to mind. If you point SketchUp at the topmost sub folders, when you select that folder, it’ll show you the folders inside. It means you have to click through one more time to get to the texture or component but you don’t have to add a new folder to the list every time you add one.
Thanks Dave… Bread textures have always fascinated me. Now, back to my original conundrum… should I keep the larger color palette and blow away the smaller? What happens if I attach a palette that has a material that is named the same as an existing material in the model, but both are clearly different materials with the same name?
Thanks for your help, by the way. Sorry, I don’t get the forum emails at my work, so sometimes not quick to respond.
