Is there help for Shop version? I am getting so frustrated because all the help shows what looks like the Pro version and I can’t figure out how that translates to the Shop version. In particular, I’m trying to edit a material but the edit icon is always grayed out. The Help is no help because I don’t get a edit dialog. Thanks, Gary
Editing materials in Shop is basically the same as in Pro. The material must be In Model and you must have selected it before clicking on the Edit button.
OK that worked, thanks.
I didn’t click on the material in the list, I clicked on the material in the model. It didn’t occur to to me to click on it in the list because my list has hundreds of materials in it even though only four are used in the model and the one I was trying to edit was at the very bottom and easy to overlook. I am looking at the list under the ‘house’ tab. Why does your list only show four materials?
If you don’t select the material, SketchUp has no way of know which one you want to edit.
That would then be showing you the In Model materials which is what you need to be looking at in order to edit a material.
Because my model only uses four materials. If yours is only using four of them, you should purge it of the rest. Click the recycle button at the bottom of the Materials panel.
Before you do that, though, purge unused components from the model. Open the Components panel, click on the house icon so you are looking at the In Model components and click the recycle button at the bottom of that panel.
Thank you. Now I understand why it is doing this. I have a lot of Components from the Warehouse in my model. All those Materials are in the Components. Thanks again.
Keep in mind that components and materials that you might have used in the model but later deleted will remain in the In Model Components/Materials. Purging unused is an important thing to do to keep file size under control.
This feature of keeping In Model components and materials can be a benefit. For example if you inadvertently click Erase instead of Hide, you can recover from that if the object is a component. If it’s a group, you’d remake it. Of course what you see when you erase or hide an object looks the same until you want to unhide it. If you discover you erased the component, you can just drag another instance out from the In Model components. (As long as you haven’t purged after erasing it.)
There are some times that I will leverage this by modeling a component in one spot in the model and then inserting it from the Components panel instead of trying to move it into place. Most of the time components are created in place but sometimes it is easier to place them after making them.