Hi, I am new to sketchup so forgive me if very basic question. I am trying to get to grips with colouring up shapes in Sketchup. I have played around with changing the colour of object colours in the Entity panel as well as in styles. But I am stuggling with which one takes priority over the other. Perhaps the attached screen shot explains a text example when the Entity panel colour is taking priority over the Style colour. Can someone help demystify
Just to add, I would welcome advice on the best practice / approach to colouring up objects so that I can change the colour of that group of objects quickly and in one go
Materials applied to faces take priority over materials applied to group or component “wrappers”. If you have nested objects (groups/components) materials applied to the child objects inside will take priority over materials applied to the parent object. In most cases it’s best to apply materials to the faces not the object wrappers.
Thanks a lot Dave. So if I apply a colour to multiple faces, if I want to change that colour what is the most efficient way (in appose to manually going back around and changing them one by one?)
And how do I remove the colour from a face (so that it defaults back to the group) without having to delete the face and remake it…?
If it’s just a color you could edit the color in the Colors panel. Best is probably to just open the group/component and repaint the faces. You can select multiple faces and paint them in one click.
To remove the material from the faces repaint them with Default material. Look at the In Model colors for the Default material (a square divided diagonally into the front and back face colors).
Thanks, so there is no way of changing a material in one place and in changes all faces with the material applied to them? Would save soooo much time
For example the Dashed line in the Tags section is effecting all shapes tagged. But the colour / material is not doing anything… See screen shot. Thanks 
It depends on how you’ve structured the model.
Yes. All groups/components with the same tag will show the same dash style (Note that edges and faces are to be created and remain untagged. Only groups and components are to be given tags)
Correct. Again, you can edit the material if you wish to make a global change without editing the objects. You can also select all of the faces inside an object and repaint them in one click. If you use components instead of groups you can repaint the faces in one instance of the component and all the other instances will how the same change.
Ok thanks, will give that all a try!
You may find Material Replacer and Material Tools Extensions helpful.
Thanks have downloaded them, but how do I edit the extensions tool bar on the left
@DaveR if I want to keep all the shapes with no fill material but change the line colours of the shapes to indicate different real world materials, what is the best practice way to do this so that they can be changed globally and not one by one ? Thanks a lot
@bmike I installed Material Replacer and Material Tool, but cant see them in the toolbar selector panel. Am I being stupid???
check the extension menu. not all extensions have toolbars or buttons, many work only from the menus or with a right click.
You can temporarily change the face style to Wireframe, select the edges, and paint them with the desired color. You’ll need to edit the Edge settings in the style to show edge color by Material.
