topic Re: HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS??? in Project data & BIM

HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS???

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:44:30 GMT

I have a large file of materials that I want to add to ArchiCAD. How do I go about doing this? The Help menu offers no advice on importing materials. Here's what I've tried so far...

I've gone through the library manager and selected the folder that the textures are in, and I cannot seem to find them if I open the model materials box (see attachment).

I've gone through the attribute manager to the materials attribute manager box and tried to select the folder and import the materials, but that does not work.

I've also gone into the material settings dialog box and tried to select the folder there, but it seems to only want to select a single file, and I don't want to spend all day importing the materials one by one.

Please help with how to proceed... I know there's probably an easy quick way to do this.

Re: HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:45:09 GMT

The file format is .tif if that's of any concern.

Re: HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS???

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:37:03 GMT

I don't know of any other way to import material-textures then by creating a new material and attach the texture. I guess you will have do it one by one. But once you have created these materials they are easy to share in your project by use of the attribute manager.

Re: HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS???

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:47:40 GMT

Master wrote:
I guess you will have do it one by one.

I seriously hope not.

Re: HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS???

Laszlo Nagy — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:11:32 GMT

A texture must be assigned to a Material.
Masterscript is correct, There is no other way to go.
See, in ArchiCAD, texture is only one parameter of a Material definition so by loading a folder full of textures does not achieve much.
From this point of view, the title of the topic does not really communicate what you are trying to achieve because you do not want to import materials, you want textures to get automatically assigned to materials, if I understand it correctly.

Re: HOW TO IMPORT Materials???

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:14:56 GMT

Ok, I may have incorrectly explained what I wanted.

I want to add a folder of textures to Archicad's stock folder of textures, so that when I open the wall tool, for example, I can assign a different texture to the wall.

Re: HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS???

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:20:46 GMT

laszlonagy wrote:
because you do not want to import materials, you want textures to get automatically assigned to materials, if I understand it correctly.

See attachment. I want more of those.... can I do that by adding a folder of textures?

Re: HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS???

Laszlo Nagy — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:23:09 GMT

No, you will have to duplicate material, rename it, set material attributes, assign the desired textures, one by one, unfortunately.
Once you do this you will be able to transfer these materials from one project to another with Attribute Manager.

Re: HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS???

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:31:56 GMT

Ok, sorry for the misunderstanding...

Re: HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS???

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:06:08 GMT

hello!
I imported the new materials as I wanted but when i do the renders they don't appear..Could anybody tell me why is this happening although they seem to me perfect before the rendering?Thank you in advance

Re: HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS???

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:54:04 GMT

Penelope,

Maybe this topic has something to do with it. It may be the rendering engine you are using.

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=30715&highlight=

Re: HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS???

ares997 — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 22:48:24 GMT

Just to clarify you can not bring a material in with it's texture already pre assigned. Is that correct? So if I have a wall in another file that has a texture that I would like to use I need to reassign that texture to the material?

Really? I can't create an attributes file with the the texture and materials that I want and then import it into another file?

Is there some other work around?

Re: HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS???

Karl Ottenstein — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:04:37 GMT

ares997 wrote:
Really? I can't create an attributes file with the the texture and materials that I want and then import it into another file?

Works fine for me.

Re: HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS???

Dwight — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:16:40 GMT

If you aren't too picky about material ID numbers, you can do a simple cut and past between two open files to import a new material.

Re: HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS???

Barry Kelly — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 01:52:01 GMT

So long as the texture file (i.e. JPG file) is in the loaded library of the job that you are pasting to or transfering the material attribute to then all will be fine.
If you do not have the texture file in the loaded libraru you will get an "Missing" texture in your library loading report.
Barry.

Re: HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS???

Dwight — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 04:01:14 GMT

I'm a sloppy library manager. Just keep the same one and it gets bigger and bigger. That way, I never need worry about things loaded or not.

BTW: Dwight's Library Image Management Trick #39

I developed this trick in doing my first book, making many texture images to try material strategies and I had a gigantic library - reloading after every addition was just too slow.

To speed things up: Build a library folder with several dummy image files in it. Number them sequentially - or whatever. Once their addresses are loaded in the library, their content can be swapped without reloading. Just save the new image to an existing numbered file already loaded in the library. Archicad can't tell the difference. Nyuk nyuk. There's no undo so be careful.

Re: HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS???

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 18:17:36 GMT

Dwight wrote:
BTW: Dwight's Library Image Management Trick #39

I developed this trick in doing my first book, making many texture images to try material strategies and I had a gigantic library - reloading after every addition was just too slow.

To speed things up: Build a library folder with several dummy image files in it. Number them sequentially - or whatever. Once their addresses are loaded in the library, their content can be swapped without reloading. Just save the new image to an existing numbered file already loaded in the library. Archicad can't tell the difference. Nyuk nyuk. There's no undo so be careful.

An extra step to manage (but a great strategy to reduce project libraries)... Clever! And the undo issue might not be a big deal if you have incremental backups! Was this trick published on the LW book or your Artlantis one? Thanks for sharing.

Re: HOW TO IMPORT MATERIALS???

Dwight — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 18:30:15 GMT

This trick merely bypasses the cyber-drudgery of reloading libraries when adding occasional textures.

While I might have outlined the trick in prior posts, it isn't in any of my books. You certainly don't need this trick in Artlantis since textures are managed differently - so loose and all continental-like.

Those French! They have a different dialog for everything!