Thank you Emmanuel, I did not expect it to be possible right now. I did know you could list materials in the mtl file that are not used, but as you said, you loose them when exporting. I just couldn't find a way to use them.
Displaying a dropdown list with extra materials listed in the mtl file associated with a specific furniture part is exactly what I'm looking for and I'm very hopefull knowing you are already looking for a solution.
Editing OBJ and MTL files is something I do all the time, so no problem there and I don't think other advanced users that create their own furniture would have any problems either. It's virtually unavoidable when you create furniture in Sweethome3D. It's probably easier than having four opening doors and two opening drawers in the same cupboard like I'm creating at the moment.
I would suggest to start with just the OBJ and MTL files since that is the base format for Sweethome3D and it would allow the OBJ exporter to be extended to include the alternatives so you don't loose them. We can't export to DAE or 3DS so I see no immediate use for it. In any case a solution shoudn't break the current feature that you can get rid of parts by exporting furniture with the unwanted parts made invisible. That's how you 'steal' a handle from one object to place it on another. Maybe marking alternatives with a sweethome3d prefix could avoid that since alternatives aren't really invisible, just 'not selected'.
The 'cabinet-handle' option you mentioned is also something I've been looking in to but I didn't want to ask for too much in one go
Specifically for handles but also for different panels on door fronts or different legs under a table. Something I'm doing today could use this option: a cupboard with glass doors in the upper half where I created two shelves behind the glass doors at the same position: one solid and one glass. You have to make the solid shelf invisible to see the glass shelf, but since the glass shelf 'hides' completely within the solid shelf you wouldn't have to bother with hiding that. Switching the shelves like cabinet handles would be a much cleaner solution.
I'm looking forward too what you come up with in the hopefully near future. I have a lot of custom made furniture that could use it.
Keet
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