Update an imported DXF and keep the materials

[redlegoreng]

Hi !

My office uses VectorWorks to design and model urban projects.
I'm currently evaluating the idea of acquiring Sketchup + Vray for Sketchup to do our renderings.

The export-import works well (DXF). But if I modify the project in VectorWorks, as I export-import it again, I must reassign all materials that I have configured in Sketchup, since it seems that they are referenced by color rather than name... This makes the workflow very inefficient because the projects often change.

At first, I thought I could use the layer's materials to overcome this problem, but it seems Vray for Sketchup uses only the object material...

Is there a script or plugin for this ? Or does anyone have a better workflow idea ?

Thanks !!

Olivier

[dkendig]

I don't believe there is an out of the box solution already, but the workflow I would use, is the V-Ray Material Editor's "select all objects using this material" and "assign material to selected faces" tools. Another option I can think of, would be to create a proxy object out of the imported mesh. As long as the material IDs all line up you could reuse the same multi material between versions of the vrmesh. The latter is more error prone, so a script or the manual method I described are probably your best bet.

[rabika]

Nice surprise about this shorter form. Can you tell us what it is you are talking/writing about?Has any info. about this shorter form been posted before (and i just missed