Hey all, I have done a bunch of digging through the forum and so far cannot seem to figure out it this is possible…
For my building models, I design everything in color for the client. Once the design is complete, I have a series of black&white materials that I use on the model for transitioning to drawings in Layout (no ones wants to print colored drawings $$$).
Is there a way to link the colored model and the black/white model so that if a change is made to one, it is also made to the other while maintaining their unique textures/materials? I’m thinking there might be a way to do this with dynamic components? Or is this totally not possible?
I also use Greyscale when I want to use textures without color. No need to replace the materials in the components and it will allow you to revert to the colored materials if you need to go back.
Not sure what Mike is describing regarding pasting in place. If you need a colored PDF and then a greyscale PDF you can run the extension in SketchUp, save the changes, and then update the reference in LayOut.
If you or the client is printing the PDF, could just choose that option in Adobe Reader, Acrobat, or other PDF viewer and leave the PDF in color for viewing on screen.
Often my ‘looks pretty’ model isn’t the same as my production model, and I have had the occasional glitch where I haven’t been able to go back to the color version…
So if I make changes for clients it is usually in a streamlined version different from the one referenced in my my LO file… I will then bring in the model as a component (replace) or copy / paste in place, depending on what I’ve setup.
I’m not sure that the greyscale plug-in will work. For example, if I am using a black lap siding on the model, I want the LO version of my model to show white siding with black lines noting the boards. Think more along the lines of a typical hatching look.
To acheive this, I have created a set of “hatching” materials in sketchup that can be applied to the model so that it prints as black and white.
Essentially, I need a way to have two instances of a model that have unique materials, that behave like components when changing the geometry.
Sample Model.skp (1.1 MB)
Here is a very crude sample of what I’m talking about. One instance of the model with colored materials and one with a different set of monochromatic materials.
Yes. The material on the faces inside the component will be displayed on all instances of the component. Materials applied to the component wrappers are specific to the component instance. See the example I added in my previous post.
Note that materials applied to the faces inside of the component override the material applied to the wrapper. You could leverage that. Here you can see that each lamp is a component. The legs have the default material applied to them but the faces of the shade and the wicker wrapped around the legs have their own materials. So applying the wood material to the lamp component affects only the legs. You can see the material applied to the selected component indicated in Entioty Info.
This could kind of work, but not really ideal for use on an entire building model. I would also lose the ability to effectively use components for changing the color of multiple items.
