title pretty much sums it up. mostly. SOMETIMES it lets me paint an object without going into it.
In this case I have an object that shaped like a piece of plywood. Why do I have to open the object and select all before I can paint it another color? Every change I make I have to back out of the component ( worse if nested) to see the how the changes look. then go back into it to make another change.
I don’t understand the reason to not allow the paint bucket to be used on a component.
The paint bucket CAN be used on a component or group wrapper. If it’s already had the faces painted, that material overrides a material painted on the component/group wrapper.
If you paint the wrapper, you give up the option to control the orientation of the material, though. That’s fine for plain colors but for things like wood where the grain direction is usually important, it makes more sense to paint the faces instead of the wrapper.
So paint the whole container first, as a whole, then you can change it all you want. UNTIL you paint a face inside, then you lose control. is that right?
also, how do you change the texture orientation? I have only been able to do that with a plug in.
Also, can you reset the faces to default so you can paint the container?
As Dave has noted, the paint bucket tool can be used on a ComponentInstance or Group. There is, however, some logic about how the applied materials interact when applied to both the container and its contents. If something other than the default material is applied to an entity nested in a CI or Group, that material will “show through” regardless of what is applied to the CI or Group itself. But when the default material is on a nested entity, the material painted onto the CI or Group will show on it. When you have both the container and only some of the contents non-default, this can become confusing!
If you paint the container you can change the material to a different one without opening the container. That’s not the best way to apply materials but it can be done.
You can replace the materials on the faces by painting the default material on them. in the Materials window there’s a “dive flag” icon with the default front and back face colors. Use that to repaint the faces. Or delete the applied material from the In Model library and it’ll get replaced with the default color.
There’s not much point in learning how to change the orientation of materials if you only plan to paint the containers since you won’t have that option. If you paint the faces, however, you can right click on a face and choose Texture>Position and control orientation from there.
Another benefit of applying the material to faces instead of wrappers is that you can apply different materials to different faces so you can apply an edge material and a surface material and make it look like plywood.
I couldn’t have shown the edge grain of the plywood or indicated end grain on the hardwood pieces by painting the containers.
And it really doesn’t take long to do it.
Also, if you use decent texture images of wood, you can pick out different parts so the material doesn’t appear to repeat. The seats for these stools are made from two pieces of wood glued together although I drew them as a single component. By painting the surfaces, I was able to pick out different parts of the board for each half of the seat. Not an option if you paint the container instead.
SketchUp help:
http://help.sketchup.com/de/article/94958
You can use the difference between face and container color, if you know how, as an example:
One thing about materials has started to annoy me. There is no way of preventing the material from scaling when the group or component is scaled. As I often build my models from “Lego blocks” that I scale to size, this limits my choice of materials to plain colours.
Anssi
Are your Lego blocks all same components that are different sizes? Because you can use “scale definition”
If my memory is correct, I believe Tig has a plugin to re scale materials correctly.
There are actually two different workflows that would benefit from a way of applying textures that would remain standard size irrespective of scaling:
Anssi
Did you use 2 different textures on the seat face or did you use 1 edited texture to get the effect. I guess what I am asking is if you can put multiple textures on 1 face.
Are you talking about the oak stools I showed? It’s only one texture. Only one texture can be applied to a single face. The entire seat of the stool is painted with one texture but I divided the seat so I could make it look like two boards and I used different parts of the same texture image. After getting the materials where I wanted I hid the dividing edges.
Yeah I was talking about the oak seats. You answered my question though. I didn’t know if you could use more than one texture per face. I thought you might have drawn a line dividing it into 2 faces but your way made it more seamless. I just couldn’t find anywhere if you could use 2 textures for one face even though I suspected that it wasn’t possible. Thanks for the response.
Hello,
I don’t know if it was solved or not or if someone mentioned it, but I faced a similar situation, I accidently found a way to make it all the group color.
-1 make the object you want to color as a group
-2 go into the group
-3 press Shift while using the bucket
I hope it will help!
Good luck everyone
Sorry but no it doesn’t. This is very random, one SIMPLE group the paint bucket is ok but for another it isn’t - both are solids and it is very annoying.
Did I accidently load an Annoy_user extension? 
Sorry but yes it does. It’s not a random thing at all.
Share your SketchUp model file so we can see. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation.
Thanks for your help Jeffrey.
I’m gonna give you an example with colour, it’s the same with material of any kind.
By default, everything in your model is neutral. depending on your style, neutral is white/grayish, or something else. My default theme uses a bland light/dark blue.
As soon as you apply a material on a face, you tell sketchup “this face is not neutral anymore, now it’s… let’s say green.”
When you apply a material (green, let’s keep green) on a group or a component (I’m gonna say group later, but it’s on both really), what you say to SU is “ok, now, inside this group, neutral = green”. In your general file neutral = neutral, but not inside the group where it’s green.
Therefore, all the neutral faces of your group become green. Now if you enter the group and select a (green) face, you’ll see it’s actually neutral (check entity info). and since neutral = green, it will look green. If, while inside the group, you paint a specific face, let’s say red, it stops being a neutral face, it’s now red. Therefore, the neutral=green thing doesn’t apply to it. it’s not neutral it’s red.
Off course, this idea stacks if you have a group containing a group containing…
When should you paint inside or outside ? as Dave said a few years back, by painting outside the group, you abandon the material edition tool. so off course, if you’re using colours or materials like gravel and grass, it’s fine. it allows you to paint the whole group quickly and then enter the group to paint details with something else. Or paint everything face by face.
with materials like tiles and brick, being able to align material to faces is important, so you’ll probably apply it face by face.
90% of the material trouble you’ll get with the 3d warehouse come from that (source : trust me). You’ll grab a couch, component, containing several groups containing several groups containing faces. You want to remove the ugly material of the pillows ? find where it was applied (at what level).
or delete the material and repaint the now neutral faces (I often do that, download the object, strip it bare, and repaint it myself).
or use an extension like fredo thrupaint
or stop using the 3d warehouse and model everything rom scratch like a 3d warrior 
Not sure if this helps
