topic Re: Undesirable Materials in Project data & BIM

Undesirable Materials

Kevin Motyka — Fri, 26 May 2023 13:22:13 GMT

At some point in time I had imported numerous materials into the attributes. I found over the course of time all these materials just populated an undesirable list. I have tried numerous ways to eliminate these pesky materials, with not success. Does anybody have any suggestions of how to get rid of them? Permanently!

Re: Undesirable Materials

Dwight — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 17:22:02 GMT

Attribute Manager.

Re: Undesirable Materials

Kevin Motyka — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 18:15:15 GMT

I have tried using the attribute manager numerous times and it DOES NOT remove the undesirable materials.

Thank you for the suggestion.

Re: Undesirable Materials

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 19:36:47 GMT

You may have objects in your loaded libraries that bring their own materials in.

Re: Undesirable Materials

Kevin Motyka — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 19:44:58 GMT

Is there a way to find out what those objects might be?

Re: Undesirable Materials

Kevin Motyka — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 19:52:58 GMT

Stuart,

I appears you have helped me to find the culprit. Thank you so much!

Kevin

Re: Undesirable Materials

ares997 — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 22:05:54 GMT

Is there a way to strip the materials out of objects without going through and changing every single one? I have an entire library I'm trying to adjust but I am finding that the objects are in fact bring in their own materials. I've tried deleting them from the attribute manager. I tried deleting then adding in placeholder materials to see if they will magically be attracted to some other material through their numerical placement and association. Any ideas about what I could or should do to change every single material option in 1500 library parts to a single material?

Thanks!

Re: Undesirable Materials

Kevin Motyka — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 22:31:49 GMT

I wish I could help you. Thankfully I was able to find the one object that contained all the undesirable materials.

I can also say the materials seem to become the default in other objects. So far after omitting that the one object, the defaults seem to have changed in other objects. I totally expect this not to be the case, but so far it is working.

My suggestion is to find the one or hopefully few objects that might contain the undesirable material(s).

Please keep us posted as to what you do to rectify the issue.

Kevin

Re: Undesirable Materials

Karl Ottenstein — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:12:44 GMT

ares997 wrote:
Is there a way to strip the materials out of objects without going through and changing every single one? I have an entire library I'm trying to adjust but I am finding that the objects are in fact bring in their own materials. I've tried deleting them from the attribute manager. I tried deleting then adding in placeholder materials to see if they will magically be attracted to some other material through their numerical placement and association. Any ideas about what I could or should do to change every single material option in 1500 library parts to a single material?

Thanks!

No... not if the object itself creates the material. If you're lucky, the library in question creates the materials in its Master_GDL file, rather than in every single object.

Note that objects do not 'bring in' materials in any way other than creating them. They may reference materials that are undefined/missing; that's another story. But, when an object creates it's own materials, you have to find the GDL code for the material creation and either alter it to your new specs if the object is not material-parametric, or delete the material creation code so that the object will look in your existing attributes for a like-named material.

What you want to search for is "DEFINE MATERIAL ..."

Re: Undesirable Materials

Dwight — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 05:13:46 GMT

And since we're talking about undesirable materials, how about that ugly 'Pine, Shiny', eh?

Re: Undesirable Materials

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 18:25:21 GMT

Attributes management can be a real bear and taming materials can be particularly challenging. There's much that can be done but it's one of those areas where you have to chose your battles and focus on what's productive.