Move 2d Graphic to Different Surface

I’m creating a sketch for an exhibition, and I’m importing different paintings as 2d graphics. How can I move an image from one wall to another without reimporting it?

Look into the difference between importing an image as a ‘texture’ vs. an ‘image’.

Images brought in as textures, can be painted onto the wall via the paint tool – see the ‘colors in model’ option from within the paint menu, to re-access the texture version of your imported image.

Pictures that are brought in as images, can be duplicated within SU via the move tool… press the ‘alt’ /‘opt’ key before dragging with the move tool to initiate it’s copy/duplicate mode.


For your particular purposes you probably want to import the images as images, if they’re to be treated as hanging paintings upon a wall within SU.

Using them as textures will require sizing them as textures to fit the entire surfaces correctly, and/or make compromises re: the different aspect ratios between wall size and the imported images size.

When I import them as images, can I affix them to a different wall? At the moment when I move an image It just floats off the wall with a gap between the image and the wall :confused: It’s rough to have to import them all over again since I’m working with over 20 images.

When you import an image that image becomes glued to the wall you are importing it over. As you can see the directly importing over a wall of an image gives you no face fighting- meaning the image is well visible against the wall.
If you want to move it on a different wall you must unglue it. But if you use the Rotate tool it automatically unglues it.
If you right click and unglue, the wall will cover the image. In that case, you either move the image a bit away from the wall or you cut a surface on the wall exactly as the image.
A faster way to move it is to hold CTRL while moving(with move tool) to a different wall, but you will have to delete the original image after the operation, and also you need to move the new one further away from the wall to be visible.

Great thank you, this answers all my questions.

I am having the same issue - importing images onto walls to model an exhibition (over 300 images) and am unable to move them from wall to wall without re-importing. Can anyone please explain my options? I am new to SketchUp.

From just above.

Is there any way to make the image visible once it is on the new wall?