What exactly is a Skalp material

A Skalp material is a unique kind of SketchUp texture. Its main use case is to drastically enhance the fills used in Skalp sections. Its key properties are:

• auto created tileable png texture. Used as a texture it is ‘seamless’.
• based off a vectorial definition: autocad pattern files
• supports line colors, line widths and background colors including transparency
• editable (fully parametric)
• scaleable: auto adapts to different Skalp section scales while preserving sharp and exact line widths on printouts.
• can be exported to dxf as real vectorial information.
• In a Skalp section they offer a drastical enhancement over standard material textures
• Alternatively it can also be used as a quick and fun way to texturize your SketchUp model.

Key elements in the Skalp material concept you need to understand:

1. A Skalp material is created and/or modified using the Pattern Designer.
2. As input sources it uses a vectorial recipe, supplemented with extra information:
scaling/size data, a line color, a background color and a line width.
3. The vectorial recipe uses the standard autocad pattern file syntax. Essentially these are just text files storing one or more ‘pattern definitions’. Each such ‘pattern’ consist of a number of text lines In a pattern definition the first line always starts with a ‘*’ followed by a name and an optional description. This is then followed by a series of lines with comma separated numbers representing how a hatch pattern looks.
It is a relatively simple vectorial data format. You can get these pattern files from several online sources and directly import them into Skalps Pattern Designer.
   A detailed description of the *.pat format will be added to this manual later. The format is well documented on the internet. Look for *.pat file format. Once you understand the syntax, you could also create/edit your own custom pattern files.
4. As output a tileable SketchUp texture is added to your model. Once created you can see this texture in the SketchUp Colors dialog.
5. The entire recipe (pattern definition, as well as its size, colors and line widths) is stored onto the created SketchUp texture as meta data. This is what makes them ‘parametric’: the ability to edit any part of the recipe later on using the Pattern Designer.