Set up colour, texture and material lists — gull system handbook

An entry's name is the order's value. A texture's optional colour, a material entry's three facts, and why a material is picked rather than typed.

Set up colour, texture and material lists

An entry's name is what the customer sees and what the order carries. What actually reaches the CAD is stored beside it.

In the Library section you prepare the lists your customer will choose from. The same rule holds in all three: an entry's name is the order's value. The customer sees "Nerez", not "AISI 304".

Colours

  1. Open Library → Colours and create a list.
  2. Add an entry: the name the customer will see, and a colour as `#RRGGBB`.
  3. You can adjust the colour without renaming the entry — every order already carrying that name follows the change.

Textures

  1. Open Library → Textures and create a list.
  2. Add an entry: an image (or a `.p2m` file from the CAD) and a name.
  3. Leave the colour empty if the image is to be used as it is.
  4. Fill it in if the texture is to be tinted. The colour multiplies with the texture: on grey textures (brushed metal, fabric) it colours exactly what you expect; on photographic wood it mostly muddies the shade.

There is no separate "textures + colours" folder any more — a tinted texture is simply a texture with its colour filled in. Your earlier lists moved into Textures with their colours intact.

Materials

  1. Open Library → Materials and create a list.
  2. Add an entry and pick the material from the list offered. gull system offers what is actually installed on this machine.
  3. Type the customer-facing name ("Nerez"). The CAD material ("AISI 304") and the library it came from ("solidworks materials") are stored with it — so an entry carries three facts.
  4. Optionally fill in a colour too. One entry ("Nerez červená") then means both the material and the shade, and the customer chooses once; wiring that up is in Wire a finish to the customer's choices.

⚠ A material is picked, never typed. A name the CAD does not recognise is refused with no message at all — the part quietly keeps its old material and the order completes as if nothing were wrong. A hand-typed name with diacritics is a silent-failure generator.

⚠ The library is part of the identity, not a label. Two libraries can hold a material of the same name — your own beside Dassault's — and pointing at the wrong one is another silent failure. That is why both the name and the library are stored.