Using and modifying element materials

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After completing this lesson, you will be able to understand materials, create a new material, and load a material library.

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The objective domains covered are: 1.2a, associate a material with an object or a style.

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And, 1.2c, load a material library.

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Materials control how elements appear in various views and renderings.

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Materials can also have an impact on structural analysis and hence should be carefully managed.

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The materials browser dialog contains all of the required tools to manage and create new materials.

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Go ahead and open up the model 020-Using and modifying element materials.

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The model opens up in a 3D view.

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We'll stop by looking at the materials browser dialog box.

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On the Manage ribbon, select "Materials".

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In the Materials Browser dialog box, you see this is split into two areas.

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The panel on the left hand side allows us to browse all of the assets in our current document.

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The panel on the right hand side contains asset tabs.

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These various different tabs control things like graphics, appearance, physical, and so on.

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Let's search for a particular grade of steel.

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So here I'm going to type in ASTM.

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A search is then performed on all the assets in my current document, and you'll see here that we have a particular steel called Steel ASTM A53.

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Let's now review some of the asset properties,

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so you'll notice I'm on the Physical tab type and here I can review the mechanical and strength properties.

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Like we said earlier, this can be utilized for structural analysis.

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We could then review the appearance, here we're using this Paint - Enamel Glossy (Blue).

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Then we can review the Graphics tab here.

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This would affect 2D and 3D views, whereas the Appearance tab only affects rendered views and views that are used in a realistic appearance.

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What we're now going to do is produce a copy of this steel and simply just change its color.

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So let's right click over it and then we'll duplicate this.

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You'll now notice that we have a copy and I'm going to keep the grade of steel the same here, but we'll just simply type in the color red afterwards.

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Now in order to change this, I'd also have to change the material that it's using in this Appearance asset tab.

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You'll note here that we're currently using Paint - Enamel Glossy (Blue).

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Let's go ahead here and replace this asset.

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In the asset browser dialog box, I would do a search for red.

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You'll see here that we have Paint - Enamel Glossy (Red).

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To utilize this, we'll simply double click.

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You'll now notice that that's passed directly into the materials browser dialog.

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Once we've done this, we can simply close the assets browser.

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You'll now notice that I have two materials. I have my blue steel and my red steel.

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Also note on the Graphics tab, we have this same red color utilized here because we've checked Use Render Appearance.

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Let's go ahead and select "OK" to our Materials browser dialog.

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We'll now change the material on these three slanted columns.

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With the "Ctrl" key held down, select the three slanted columns in the model,

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in the Properties palette, you'll note that we have an instance property for structural material.

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This button here will allow us to browse to the materials browser.

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And, of course, here we can now select our new material, Steel ASTM A53 red.

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And there's our new material applied.

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Finally, you go ahead and load a predefined materials library.

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On the Manage ribbon, select "Materials".

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In the Materials Browser dialog box, in the bottom left, you'll note here with the dropdown menu, you can open an existing library.

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Go ahead here and select the ACP Materials Library from your dataset and click "Open".

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The materials library is now open.

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Let's search this by typing the word concrete.

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Let me open up the materials library,

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you'll now notice that we can view all of the materials that match concrete from the AEC Materials library or our ACP library.

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Go ahead and click "OK" to Materials Browser dialog.