I am new to sketchup and have started using the program mainly to export my 3D files and then process them to render later with Vray or Enscape.
So I own all the programs, however I am having problems with the basic functions specifically in managing groups, elements and textures. As you can see from the attached image, after exporting my building from Archicad as a Sketchup file, importing it to Sketchup all groups or elements seem to have an “oblique” axis reference system. This causes me problems in both scaling and setting textures. Is there a method by which I can change on the whole model the axes and thus have each object “oriented” the right way. Why does something like this happen when importing from archicad?
Another question is about textures, how can you scale a texture applied to a column? Every time I click the column it seems as if I can change the texture of one side of the polygon and not the column as a whole.
To be known: I’m working on a Mac studio M2, with sketchup 2023 and updated vray & enscape
You can realign the group axes by opening the group for editing, right clicking on an axis line and choosing Place. The place the origin followed the red and then green axis.
If youare making components instead of groups you can either align the axes when you create the component or you can change the axes by right clicking on the component without opening it for editing.
Hi DaveR, thank you very much for your fast answer. Does it mean that I have to do it manually for every group in the model? I have a whole building with 7 floors, with walls, facade, etc.
Isn’t there a method for doing it all at ones? as you can see in my attachment I have sooo much groups that changing each of them seems insane
What about the colums and texture do you have any insides?
If they are groups you’d have to edit each one to correct its axes to align as you want. If they were components, changing the axes for one would update all other instances (copies) of the component in the model.
As for the textures, you might get away with editing the texture dimensions in the Colors panel. Did you apply the materials to the objects or to the geometry inside. Did you scale the groups/components or did you scale the geometry inside?
A lot of these problems can be avoided with proper workflow on the front end. Often leaving them until later makes the work a whole lot more difficult and time consuming.
I applied the material to the group. I first removed all the existing texture embedded from Archicad on the group (via “remove all material” in vray) and the applied the material by clicking “apply to selection” which in my case normally is the group.
I was hoping to have the chance to scale the material by clicking with the right click on the mouse, and then under texture use place as the way of reshaping. But it looks like sometimes is not working.
How would be better to prepare the file while importing in in sketchup? I thought that by separating every object (with layers which in sketchup seem to be the TAGS) that was supposed to have the same material I would select the layer and then apply the material.
I would have first looked at places to leverage components instead of just using groups. Any scaling would have been done to the geometry within the group/component containers or at lest after saling objects, the definitions would get scaled to update them. Materials would be applied to the faces within the groups/components. Materials would not be applied until after the geometry is correctly modeled including dimensions.
You lost the ability to resize and move the textures when you chose to apply the materials to the group containers. If you applied the texture to the faces inside, you could right click on a single face and choose Texture>Position. Then resize and move as desired.
Tags do not separate geometry. That’s done by collecting geometry into groups and components.
Again, applying textures to the object containers limits your option for managing the textures. As I wrote previously, you can adjust the dimensions of the textures in the Colors panel.
