To all,
While I was using SketchUP the other day, I thought it would be good if I could change the colour of a few lines, just to highlight them & others perhaps in grey to not stand out. Convinced I could do this somewhere in SU, I searched & searched but then gave up as I realised there is no menu to change some line colours from the set black…unless others know different…?? …is there an extension for this…???
Over & out,
Clayton.
You can natively change the colours By All, By Axes and By Material in the Styles window.
To change individually one option you could use Color by Edge by C.Plassais
Hi Mr Box…!!
Your second sentence is exactly what I wanted to achieve, not on mass as your first line. So, you gave me a link it would appear to an extension…!!! I found the below, this suggests by it’s description you can change a one off line colour or a few, not too sure about what colour pallet it uses. It also suggests you can change the same to dashed lines, this is also one of my wish list items as well.
However it looks a tad old so not too sure it works with SU Pro 2015…great find though, I’ll contact the author about any planned updates.
Name : ChrisP_ColorEdge
Original Date : 14 May 2010 version 0.0
Type : Plugin
Description : Edge colored
Usage : By ToolBar
Version 0.1.0
Over & out,
Clayton.
Installed and tested in 2015.
Hi Mr Box,
Great, I’ve just gone back & downloaded & viewed the videos, does a lot more on top of what I was initially after…cool.
I’ll now install it & see how it goes.
Thanks again for the direction.
Clayton.
Hi Clayton,
You’ll find more tips here:
SketchUp Sage > Tips and Tricks > Watercolor-Painterly-and-Rendered-Effects
Yes you are right to point that out Geo, I wasn’t clear in my first comment.
You can change line colours individually by painting them when you have the style set to By Material.
Hi Geo,
Thanks for that, I didn’t search hard enough I guess, this is what I was after in the first place, not too sure how it will affect a pre-drawn model or file size, but I think this setting will give my models an entire new look. I’ll have to include this setting on a new default drawing file, as I can me using colouring lines by material quite a lot to high-light & low-light certain items. All we need is for SU to have a setting in the future for dashed lines. I the meantime, the previous extension will take care of that I hope.
Many thanks to all,
Clayton.
To all,
I think I spoke too soon on the “change line colour by material” as being the answer, it’s not… 
.
The thing is when I do this, the rest of my Pre-drawn model looks washed out, as now all the line edges change to greyed out looking & looks way too soft to my eye…the Colouredge" extension is the only way it would appear to have black edge line in you model with a few coloured if you want. …I’ll now load this extension to see what it can do.
Over & out,
Clayton.
Are you saying they actually change to grayed-out or simply appear that way by comparison? I’m pretty sure they don’t actually change–it could be that you’re observing the effects of “profiles” versus ordinary edges. Perhaps you colored all the “profiles,” leaving all the “edges,” which are thinner and may therefore appear lighter, as black.
Here’s an example of an object before and after applying “Color by material.” The line weights and saturation appear identical before and after; the only thing that changes is the color.
Take a look at this article and observe the effect of the Profile attribute on line weight/density:
The Styles Browser edge panel
-Gully
No, it’s not.
It sounds like you’ve inadvertently set the Default Material Color of edges to grey.
Go to the Styles Browser and set the Edge Color to All Same and Choose Color to black.
That sets the Default Material color of edges to black.
Now go back and change the Edge Color to By Material.
The result is:
• Edges which bear the Default Material (I.e. The edges you have not painted) display as black.
• Edges you paint bear the material color you apply.
I don’t think it’s that he has set the default edge colour.
It’s that if you have an existing model that you have painted, (without attempting not to splash colour on the edges) changing to By material will make the edges take on the colour around them, making them look ‘Washed Out’.
As you see here when I change from all same to by material and by axis.
So changing a pre-existing model can make a significant difference.
Mr Box is correct,
The colour in ‘All same’ in the edge menu is black prior to changing it to ‘by material’, they’re not literally grey, just washed out looking than a black line & no good for my models as most items are coloured or coloured by a material. The only instance I’ve found the black lines remain, is when no face is coloured, i.e. default colour.
I’ve now tried the ‘coloredge’ extension, however I got mixed results, so that also is not for me. It’s odd that these simple things we take for granted like dashed lines or line types & a functional layer menu in our CAD software is taking so long to appear as the norm in SU. Oh well, SU 2016 next release may be.
Over & out,
Clayton.
Box is fine, Mr Box is my father.
not a how-to but just pointing out something else…
you can change the line colors (and other entity’s color) via Entity info:
sometimes it’s easier to select the line(s) then do it this way instead of trying to paint brush the lines in the model space… just click on the color swatch in Entity Info (shown in red here) and the color picker will pop up.
(assuming your style is set up properly as described elsewhere in the thread)
Add-- if you need to reset all edges to a single color (assuming your style is Edge by Material), switch to wireframe mode then select all-> paint them all at once.