[REQ] Styles by Object by Scene, instead of exclusively Global Style by Scene

It would be very useful that Sketchup styles could be assigned by object rather than globally to all objects in a scene.

Sketchup styles are very powerful and, in combination with layers, they can do a lot, however the complexity of what we could achieve is limited as you cannot mix styles easily and, to achieve special presentations you have to rely on compositing scenes in either Layout (stacking viewports), Image Editors like Photoshop (exporting images), Illustrator or similar software (exporting pdf/raster images) or CAD (exporting DWG/DXF).

Either of these software packages has different possibilities and limitations but you have to be a very advanced user of Sketchup, Layout and each of the packages you choose, to be able to achieve great results.

In most scenarios it isn’t possible to preview the final result and you will require trial and error approach that will get you jumping from Sketchup/Layout and/or other software to get desired results.

If we could combine different Styles for each object in Sketchup directly in Sketchup viewport, we would be able to create stunning or technical presentations very fast with a huge level of configuration.

A simple example:

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A native way to set the style per group or component (per scene remembered) would give lots of creative possibilities, indeed!

Edge and front/back face settings would be obvious, it gets more complicated when you want the background settings or watermarks combined , off course :slight_smile:

And suddenly:

Of course. Some of the background and global settings would be out of scope of the feature. Only edge and face settings would be applied I believe.

In what relates to @Fredo6 's plugin it’s a very good concept that goes beyound what I’m speaking as it’s also possible to see it as a proxy system. Also, though I had seen the plugin and actually installed it, I haven’t yet found the time to test it and I didn’t realize it could be so much connected to this request. But it’s true it’s really related.

The main differences seem to me to be:

Only 2 Variations on a Single Object:

  • In Fredo’s Ghost you can store only the original and a single ghost per object
  • In the current request, there could be as many variations as you’d have styles stored in the model and scenes where those styles were applied to a single object.

Extra Definitions in the model

  • In Fredo Ghost (which I haven’t tried) I believe the trick would be to create extra components (the ghosts), extra materials (to create the transparent effects or the alternative colors) and extra Layers so Ghosts can be managed by Scene (I cannot yet tell if that’s the case here, but it might be as otherwise I don’t believe it would be compatible with Layout.)
  • In the current request it would be a matter of having styles in the model and distributing those styles to objects in the scene.

UI integration

  • Of course that is a must. Fredo does his best to create a UI that is fit for his new ideas, that are usually much more advanced than what native tools allow.
  • Trimble would have the possibility to integrate the UI better within Model Info, Styles Panel, Outliner, Scenes Panel, Context menuetc…

Otherwise, it really is the best choice we might have so far and it is definitely worth the try!

I imagine I will still find other differences after I try the plugin, so I just hope the existence of Fredo’s plugin doesn’t make Trimble team disconsider this request, as I really see a lot of possibilities in it.

This is always a risk with extensions…