THANK YOU SO MUCH GEORGE! Now I understand what it is I was doing wrong. I could not figure out for the life of me why I couldn’t get the Texture>Position option that everyone kept telling me to use to rotate my siding.
1 Like
Sometimes I want to apply a texture to a group (or more often a component) and NOT go into it to apply texture to each face. Example: say I have a component “2x4” that is a 3D solid 1 1/2 x 3 1/2 x 96 inches (an 8’-long 2x4). Sometimes that 2x4 will be made of fir, sometimes made of pressure treated, or sometimes painted, whatever. But if I go into the component and change each face, then I’d need a separate component for each material type. Doable for a kitchen cabinet, but tedious for a house.
So here’s what I do: I make the component with the desired LONG grain surface in the blue axis direction. The red and green axes don’t matter so much. Then I select a texture with the LONG grain in the up and down direction. Applied to the component, the long grain of the fir will wrap around the component’s long sides as you expect. (Yes, the ends are not end grain, but how tedious do we need to be when showing someone that 2x4 is pressure treated?) Then if you SCALE the component along its blue axes for different lengths, the texture remains as applied. If you enter the component and push/pull or move a face, then it’s not a 2x4 anymore and you deserve the disaster that results. 
For any group, such as my 2x4 or siding or foundations, whatever, make sure the up-down direction of the texture is in the desired up-down direction on your model. If you make a group, then rotate it in the red or green plane, then the applied textures will go in crazy directions. To check: select the group, edit it, look at where its blue axis is. If it matches the blue axis in the model, you should be fine applying brick to it.
Of course, nice tweaks such as was demonstrated in the pegboard video above, can’t be handled this way, and the bricks may not line up exactly on the corners as you might wish. Then you’ll have to go into the group, apply textures to each face and position them as desired.
Thom
Hey Thom, Thanx for this, but I had a hard time following it without a visual. I’m a NEWBIE remember. LOL. I’m liked parched earth when it rains, some sinks in, but most rolls off. 
I’m getting there…a little at a time. ~heavy sign~
@FauxDesigner I don’t have a clue how to make animations (or I would have), but this .skp file kind of demonstrates applying textures to (1) individual faces, (2) to a group, and (3) to the same group rotated.
Notice that although the texture is applied to the group AFTER rotating it, it’s the same result as though you had applied the texture first and THEN rotating the group.
Hope this helps.
Texture_test.skp (792.7 KB)
P.S. Note that if the texture’s long grain is left and right in the image file used, and you want it to go up and down, you have to either: put the texture on the faces and adjust them prior to grouping the entities, or change the axes so the grain goes the right way (this is really dangerous, and although it works, I don’t recommend it).
This topic was automatically closed 91 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.