[Plugin] Material Tools (2.6.0) — 19 February 2013

[jorge2011]

Thank you very much.

[irwanwr]

thank you very much for this plugins.
it's very useful for me to keep the file size as small as it could.

[halroach]

1. Does the 'remove specific material work on textures?
2. I've got a problem when trying to remove a specific material. Have many many materials in my model and the list of materials in the plugin is not long enough for me to see all of them. Any solution?

3. The reason I am trying to use this plugin is for removing a material that has a TGA in it (which causes annoying errors when I first open the model). I am not able to find the TGA in the model, but am able to find the material it is in. When I try to right click on the material in the regular materials window, sketchup freezes for 10 seconds or so, and then I see the context menu for only a fraction of a second, and I am not able to actually delete the material. This happens a lot when I have a lot of materials in a model.

This is a sketchup bug that's been around for quite a long time! Any suggestions?

4. 'List textures in console' doesn't seem to do anything other than opening the console box, but nothing happens.

(I'm using latest sketchup pro 8 with windows 7 64bit)

[thomthom]

1. Does the 'remove specific material work on textures?

You mean removing texture from material?
The plugin would remove the material - entirely. Making no distinction if it is textured or not.

2. I've got a problem when trying to remove a specific material. Have many many materials in my model and the list of materials in the plugin is not long enough for me to see all of them. Any solution?

That's a bug in SketchUp. Only way around it is to create a WebDialog instead - which I don't have the time for right now.

3. The reason I am trying to use this plugin is for removing a material that has a TGA in it (which causes annoying errors when I first open the model). I am not able to find the TGA in the model, but am able to find the material it is in. When I try to right click on the material in the regular materials window, sketchup freezes for 10 seconds or so, and then I see the context menu for only a fraction of a second, and I am not able to actually delete the material. This happens a lot when I have a lot of materials in a model.

Have you tried assigning a different texture to that material - if the purpose is to avoid the errors when you open the model? (What does the error say btw?)

4. 'List textures in console' doesn't seem to do anything other than opening the console box, but nothing happens.

Huh! I see that as well. Sure is a bug.

[halroach]

1. cool

2. I imagine the sketchup team is aware of the bug... I really wish I could just mark a bunch of selected materials in one go, and delete them...

3. That's a good idea! I just unchecked the texture in the material, purged, saved, and the error doesn't appear anymore.
The error I get looked like this:

TGA error.JPG

4. happy I could be of assistance

---

1. Does the 'remove specific material work on textures?

You mean removing texture from material?
The plugin would remove the material - entirely. Making no distinction if it is textured or not.

2. I've got a problem when trying to remove a specific material. Have many many materials in my model and the list of materials in the plugin is not long enough for me to see all of them. Any solution?

That's a bug in SketchUp. Only way around it is to create a WebDialog instead - which I don't have the time for right now.

3. The reason I am trying to use this plugin is for removing a material that has a TGA in it (which causes annoying errors when I first open the model). I am not able to find the TGA in the model, but am able to find the material it is in. When I try to right click on the material in the regular materials window, sketchup freezes for 10 seconds or so, and then I see the context menu for only a fraction of a second, and I am not able to actually delete the material. This happens a lot when I have a lot of materials in a model.

Have you tried assigning a different texture to that material - if the purpose is to avoid the errors when you open the model? (What does the error say btw?)

4. 'List textures in console' doesn't seem to do anything other than opening the console box, but nothing happens.

Huh! I see that as well. Sure is a bug.

[TIG]

If you have a long list in a UI dialog you can click in the list pane and then use the up/down arrow keys to scroll to the item you want.
If you want to jump a long way up/down a list [i.e. to somethings that's off screen!] let's say you are on 'Aardvark' but you want to jump to 'White' then press the W key and it'll jump to the first W - perhaps 'Wheat' [assuming alphanumeric sorting], then you can press the down-arrow until 'White' is the select item...
It's not perfect... BUT it does allow you to access any item in an overly long list in a standard UI dialog...

[halroach]

If you have a long list in a UI dialog you can click in the list pane and then use the up/down arrow keys to scroll to the item you want.
If you want to jump a long way up/down a list [i.e. to somethings that's off screen!] let's say you are on 'Aardvark' but you want to jump to 'White' then press the W key and it'll jump to the first W - perhaps 'Wheat' [assuming alphanumeric sorting], then you can press the down-arrow until 'White' is the select item...
It's not perfect... BUT it does allow you to access any item in an overly long list in a standard UI dialog...

For some reason my list is not sorted alphanumerically... but your tip is good to know!

[TIG]

If you have an array of strings then array.sort! will sort it...
I'm unfamiliar with the code producing this list - but it should be easy enough to have an ordered list ??

[thomthom]

If you have an array of strings then array.sort! will sort it...

Since the list of SketchUp material names which is UTF-8 - meaning there can be multi-byte characters. And Ruby's #sort will mangle these characters because it treat each byte as individual characters.

This is another reason why a WebDialog is better - since one can make a dropdown box with scrollbar and utilize the fact the JS is Unicode compatible. (In addition I have a natural sort algorithm that would ensure that you get numbers in correct order ( 1,2,3,10...etc instead of 1,10,2,3... )

[EarthMover]

Thom, possible to add removing materials from all groups and components? Not the materials on the inside surfaces, just anything applied to a group or component itself and replacing it with default?

[TIG]

Something like

Code: Select all

Sketchup.active_model.definitions.each{|d|next if d.image?;d.instances.each{|i|i.material=nil}}

for every group/instance in the model, ignoring whether visible/locked etc...
OR

Code: Select all

Sketchup.active_model.selection.each{|e|e.material=nil if(e.is_a?(Sketchup::Group)||e.is_a?(Sketchup::ComponentInstance))&& !e.locked?)}}

to process all groups/instances in a selection, ignoring locked ones...
Copy/paste one-liners into the Ruby Console...

[rv1974]

Fantastic tools! Thank you.
What I really miss is additional script to assign the front faces material to backfaces (at least
on geometry with transparent mats).

[massimo]

Fantastic tools! Thank you.
What I really miss is additional script to assign the front faces material to backfaces (at least
on geometry with transparent mats).

viewtopic.php?p=155759#p155759

[thomthom]

Transparent.png

[rv1974]

Transparent.png

What exactly do you ask?
If it's already there (the last line) I for some mystic reason don't have it (the version is updated)
If it's a printscreen of the latest future update- it looks awesome (exactly what I mean (if it processes entire model)).
P.S. How do you make the printscreen of the dropped down list???

[thomthom]

oh... I might have forgotten to upload this little update...

[rv1974]

oh... I might have forgotten to upload this little update...

unpardonable forgetfulness

[thomthom]

Give me a couple of days. I need to release an update to TT_Lib2 first.

[rv1974]

Yet another thing:
Assign component\group mat to its front faces (to the inner geometry with default mat) would be amazing feature.
There's already the great 'remove C-G materials.rb' , something the opposite is also needed.

[thomthom]

How would you handle groups with faces of multiple materials? It's just not an symmetrical operation.

[rv1974]

How would you handle groups with faces of multiple materials? It's just not an symmetrical operation.

Only default material within the would inherit the comp\group mat. The manually set multiple mats would survive.

[thomthom]

Oh - I misread you. I thought you wanted face material to group materials.

You want the instance materials to be applied to all faces with default material in the group/component? That's already there: "Instance Material to Faces"

[rv1974]

damn how could I miss it.

[rv1974]

Give me a couple of days. I need to release an update to TT_Lib2 first.

...bump

[thomthom]

Yeeea.... didn't happen... I've run into a bug that needs fixing.

[thomthom]

Version 2.6.0

• Added Transparent Material to Backside.
• Added support Fredo updater.

[rv1974]

[EarthMover]

Thanks for the update! The transparent material to backside is a huge help!

[lubessy]

Hello,

I have problem installing this tool..

so after i downloaded.. I placed the "material tool rb " into the sketchup-> plugin forlder

and so when i opened a new sketchup.. i still don't see a new plugin for material tool...

could you tell me how to set this up after i download it???

Don't I just need to copy and paste into the sketchup- plugin folder?

and I am using sketchup 8pro version too....

[thomthom]

Notice it's an RBZ - not RB file. See this thread on how to install RBZ files: viewtopic.php?t=42315#InstallRBZ

(I'd forgotten to add the How To link for this download which I usually have)