SketchUp collections organize your default/custom/embedded Materials, Styles, and components. Do you want to understand what happens when you edit materials or styles in SketchUp? Do you want to know how to save materials, styles, and components for use in other models? If so, you need to understand how collections work!
What are collections?
I’ve always been confused with the term “collection”. You see the term used in the Details menu of the Materials, Styles, and Components panels. For example, Open or Create collection, or Add collection to favorites. But when you click on it, it opens File Explorer so you can select a folder. So is a collection just a folder on your computer? ehhhhh, not quite.
A “Collection” is the term used for a bundle of Material, Style, or component assets accessible from the drop-down menu in the respective asset panel. Take a look at the Materials collections I have below. There’s the In Model (embedded) collection, the default local collections, and a few custom local collections I’ve created. (Note: I’m going to focus on the Materials panel for the rest of this tutorial, but these principles can mostly be applied to the Styles and Components panel too.)
So they’re just folders?
In most cases, a collection has a direct relationship to a local folder on your computer. As in, there is a direct connection to a folder on your computer that has .SKM, .STYLE, or .SKP files in it, which corresponds to a collection in the Materials/Styles/Components panel drop-down menu.
For example, all the default Materials that come with SketchUp are literally just .SKM files, and they exist somewhere on your computer (wherever SketchUp has installed them), and the name of the collection in the dropdown menu corresponds to the folder name on your computer.
FUN FACT .SKM files are really just .ZIP files. If you rename the extension to .ZIP, you can unzip it and view all of the files that make up the material.
So why not just call them “folders”, if they are literally just a direct link to a folder on your computer?
Because that’s not always the case. And that’s where it gets a little complicated.
- In the Components panel, there are “cloud-based collections” accessed through the 3D Warehouse. These assets are downloaded on the fly.
- The “In Model collections” in the Components/Styles/Materials panels are the assets embedded in the model, and do not represent a local or cloud-based asset. Again, they are embedded in the current model.
So the term “collections” is used as a generic way to describe any set of assets, whether they directly correspond to a local folder, a cloud-storage location, or the embedded assets in the model (“In Model”, get it?).
Why is it important to distinguish the differences between different types of collections? It has a big effect on how assets are edited and saved.
In Model Collection
What makes the “In Model collection” important? The key thing to realize is that all editing of materials & styles (and components for that matter, though not as surprising) happens to the “In Model” asset, not the original asset.
Why does this happen?
Whenever you add a new material or style to your model from a “local collection” in the drop-down menu, a copy of that material/style is embedded in your model (and will appear in the In Model collection in the Styles panel or Materials panel.) This makes it so that all of the assets travel with the model. If you email your model to someone who doesn’t have that material or style on their computer, they will still be able to view the model as you’ve created it.
The “In Model collection” in the Styles panel or Materials panel shows you all of the embedded assets. (There’s an In Model collection in the Components panel too, but let’s keep the focus on Materials and Styles for simplicity.)
Keep in mind, every time you click on a new style or material, it gets added to the “In Model collection”, and stays there even if it is no longer being used. That’s why it’s a good idea to purge your model from time to time. Also, even if your model is completely empty, if you have a component definition in the In Model component collection that has materials on it, you won’t be able to purge the materials the component is using.
Editing In Model assets
This also means that whenever you edit a style or material, you will always be editing the embedded copy, not the original definition saved locally on your computer. In other words, all editing happens to the copy of the asset that resides in the In Model collection. It is impossible to directly edit a style or material saved on your computer.
You might be thinking, “Matt, I literally never go to the In Model collection when I apply materials. I always refer to the local collections in the drop-down to apply my materials. Does that mean every single time I apply a certain material, it is creating duplicate copies of that material and saving it to the In Model collection?”
First of all, that’s no problem, I do the same thing. I rarely go to the In Model collection either. But here’s the cool thing that SketchUp does in the background. If you click on a material in a local collection, and you already have that material in your model, SketchUp will compare the two and check to see if you’ve previously edited the embedded copy. If it detects no change, SketchUp will just secretly use the material copy you’ve already got embedded. If it does detect a change, it will low-key make a duplicate copy with a unique name and embed it without bothering you.
There are a few things you should take note of in the video above:
- When I selected the white marble a second time, SketchUp realized that I already had that material in my model, and “secretly” switched to the material already in model, instead of creating a duplicate.
- After editing the opacity of the In Model white marble, when I grabbed the white marble for the third time, SketchUp realized the two don’t match, so it added a fresh copy of the white marble from the local collection again.
- Even though I replaced the brown stone and it no longer appears in the model, the material remains in my In Model collection. Removing materials from the model space does not remove them from the In Model collection.
It’s kind of like if you were to create a painting. Your paint tubes represent the materials in your local collections, your paint pallette is your In Model collection, and the paint on the canvas represents the materials applied to faces in your model. Wiping paint from a canvas does not mean you’ve removed it from your palette. Furthermore, mixing paint together on your palette does not affect the paint still in the tube.
You might find this information irrelevant, but sometimes I think it’s good to “look under the hood” and really understand what’s happening. 🙂 Hang with me cause you’re about to finally understand how to save and organize assets to your computer.
Saving Assets for later
Since all edits happen to the embedded In Model collection, how do you go about saving a custom material or style for use in other models? This is where things get a little tricky. Let’s say you want to customize a material, then save it on your computer so you can use it in other models.
First, you need to add the material to your In Model Collection. If the material is already applied to a face in your model, it will already be in the In Model Collection. You can either sample it from the model by holding ALT and clicking on the material in your model with the Paint BucketB tool , or find it directly in the In Model collection.
You can also add a material to the In Model collection without applying it to a face by right-clicking on the material in the Materials panel > Add to Model.
Your last option is to click the Create Material button, to create a new material based on the currently selected material.
- Create a custom material. – With the In Model material active, click the Edit tab and customize the material how you wish. Remember, any time you edit a material, you are editing the one in the In Model collection. (If the edit panel is disabled, it’s because you don’t have an In Model material active.)
- Save the custom material to your computer. – While viewing the In Model collection, you can Right-click > Save as on a material thumbnail.
Alternatively, you can save all of the materials in the In Model collection to your computer by clicking the details button > Save collection As. (You must be in the In Model collection to see the “Save collection As option.)
You can also drag & drop materials using the secondary selection pane, which I’ll describe in a little bit. You just need to have a local collection set up first. - Establish a local folder as a collection. If you want to temporarily pin the folder to the drop-down menu, select Open or Create new collection in the Details menu. Navigate to the folder you just saved the material in.
If you want to permanently add the folder so it is there every time you open SketchUp, instead of selecting Open or Create new collection, select Add collection to Favorites.
That’s it. I really don’t know why they both don’t include the word “create”, because both commands simply open File Explorer, where you are prompted to select the folder you want to open. There’s nothing stopping you from creating a new folder in File Explorer no matter which command you initiated. In fact, I think both these commands are confusing, and should be changed to something like this:
- Open or Create new collection = Temporarily pin folder to menu
- Add collection to favorites = Permanently pin folder to menu
Because basically, that’s all they do. They add a folder to the dropdown menu, and show you all the .SKM files contained within. The only difference is whether the folder reappears next time you open SketchUp or not. I always got confused and thought Add collection to favorites would save the current set of materials I was looking at as a favorite. Nope! Those commands have nothing to do with whichever collection you are looking at. They both just open File Explorer.
Drag and Drop collections
Once you have some local collections set up, you can drag and drop materials between them. To do that, you need to enable the secondary selection panel, then set one panel to the collection with the source material, and the other panel with the collection where you want them to be copied to.
Then you can just drag and drop them into the new location to copy.
There are some nuances with collections that I don’t want to get into in this article. For instance, there are some inconsistencies in how component collections are favorited and removed from favorites, but the big take-away from this article is how the In Model collection relates to all of the assets in the model. If you have any questions or comments, leave a comment below!
