Missing 'Group By' variables when generating reports

Hi there,

I use SketchUp to create planting plans as part of my garden design business. I’ve attached a simple design with each circle defined as a component and representing a plant. I have developed my own materials colour palette using a combination of the standard colours and some of my own. This design uses 7 colours in total. I am having issues with generating reports with only 5 of the7 colours showing up in the report (Green1 is missing and FBGreen4 is missing). I am also experiencing this issue when generating reports on sizes and volumes of SketchUp’s landscaping materials for my full garden designs.

Why would only some of them be showing up in the reports?

Can you share your file for a closer look? Interesting that it lists 35 total yet I counted 22.

Sure. Can you access this?
The report is set up and called Materials.
I have tried adding the materials as attributes via the component attributes window. The result is it then doubles the quantity for the colours that are already in the report and lists the 2 missing colours correctly. Any help gratefully recieved!

PP 3m corner.skp (248.1 KB)

Seems like there is a problem with two conflicting materials applied to the outside of the components and to the raw geometry inside the component. In that situation the material applied to the raw face prevails but the outside material is also still recorded. Open the Largest tree (green1) and select the face and paint it with the default material, the component will change to another green because the other green is attached to the containers outside. By making all raw geometry the default material and applying the materials to the outside of the containers only the Report comes out correct, although the quantity lists as 27 which I cannot explain, the individual lists are correct and they total 22. I don’t think your choice to tag the raw geometry inside the components is affecting this, I get why you are doing that.

This solution feels sub-optimal as it requires that you color every component individually in order to get the report to be correct. Perhaps I am missing something that surely Eric-S can sort out for us.

PP 3m corner FIXED.skp (190.7 KB)

This could also be an issue.

Screenshot - 10_24_2022 , 8_27_07 PM

SketchUp reports materials applied on objects (components or groups)
All levels are selected in the report, when grouped by ‘Material’ it counts how many objects have a material applied (top row) in the whole model.
Then, per Material (row) and the number of objects that have that specific material, across all levels.

Your components might not have a material, but the nested cross groups inside them, have the same material of the face, except for one component!
(Large dark green one)

Edit: and the 6 smallest ones!
Edit: there are nested cross groups that are confusing!

Fwiw, you won’t get square footage or totals via Generate report without adding some additional formulas via Dynamic Components. Since you only need quantities, you can do this by grouping by entity name or definition.
(Change the name in the report in ‘Materials’ if you like by click)

PP 3m corner.skp (241,3 KB)

Ah ok. I’m starting to understand this a bit better now. Thanks so much for your help.

Thanks so much Mike - this fills in the missing parts of my understanding.
This has been really helpful - thanks to everyone on this thread.

So here’s my two cents on it. Firstly, for simple, solid color fills such as these, I like to apply materials to the outside of container. That said, I used Materials Tools extension to wipe the materials from your model, and reapply them. That way I knew for sure there were no materials applied to faces, potentially affecting the count.

Next, I ran the report on your file and my new clean one to compare the difference.

Here was yours:

And mine:

Both reports showed an incorrect total…so keep that in mind (ie ignore it). Even after coping to a new file, re-applying the materials and purging the file, my count showed ‘26’…when we both know you have 22 total plants. Not sure what’s going on there and I’ll see who on our side I can ask if that’s expected behavior or not.

Lastly, not entirely sure why you’re using materials and not the component definition names to calculate totals. Feel free to let me know if I missed something there.

1 Like

You can check in the outliner panel how the components were built. Some had two levels of indentation (component > group > group)
It’s why the numbers did’t add up.
Only one colored object per species is needed for the report.

2 Likes

Thanks for looking into this for me. Being fairly new to SketchUp, may I ask, when you say you prefer to add materials to the ‘outside of container’ what do you actually mean by this please?

In terms of why I was grouping by material - it was purely as an exercise of trying to understand what you can report on. I had originally grouped by definition name and this will definitely be more useful for my planting plans. I was playing with the reporting function and thought I’d try grouping by materials and couldn’t understand the result, which bugged me!

Thanks for mentioning the Materials Tools - this is very useful and I have just installed them.

This is also really helpful to find out about - thank you Mike.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 183 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.