Lost material

[Anonymous]

I have accidentally lost my "Glass- Mirror" from the materials list in AC13.

I have tried repairing the installation from the disc but that didn't work - I don't want to do full re-install in case I forget to save some of the personalising I've done. (I only use the program, I don't know where everything is stored & how to replace it.)

Perhaps someone could give me the settings for this to save me experimenting with the large number of parameters to try & re-create it?

Thanks in advance.

[Eduardo Rolon]

You can import it from another of your files using attribute manager.

[Anonymous]

But that's how I found it was gone.

It shows up as " ? MISSING" in the materials (I noticed that it wasn't rendering as I expected & checked).

Won't that be the case for all files?

[Eduardo Rolon]

Still AFAIK you should be able to pull the settings from another file or backup using Attribute Manager.

The only way that a material should go missing is if you have deleted it from the material list, if so you can get it back as previously suggested.

If that material has a texture and you have deleted it from your texture folder then that is different.

In the US version there is no Glass-Mirror material.

[David Maudlin]

rkt3ct:

If the material was part of the original installation (in other words, not one you created or imported), you can do a New & Reset, which will open a blank file with the original materials. You can assign this material to an element (like a Slab) and copy then paste it into your current project, the material will be added to your project file.

You should add a Signature to your Profile (click the Profile button near the top of this page) with your ArchiCAD version and operating system (see mine for an example) for more accurate help in this forum.

David

[Anonymous]

Just to be sure you understand. The materials are stored in the project and have nothing to do with the program settings or installation. To reinstall ArchiCAD would have no effect on the materials present in the project file.

As the others are saying, you can recover the material either with attribute manger or by copy/pasting and element from another project. An advantage of attribute manager is that you can see, and have some control over, the index number. With the copy/paste (or merge) the new materials will be indexed to the next numbers available.

You don't say where you are getting this "missing" alert. In library parts it can happen that a materia will come up missing even if you have a material of the correct name but with a different index number.

This can be a bit complicated and since I don't know the details I'll leave it at that for now. HTH.

[JaredBanks]

The simplest solution should be to just open an older version of the file, from before the material was deleted, and grab the material from there (via the attribute manager).

And if you don't have a good backup system, this would be a good time to start one!

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the help, guys.

I have resolved the problem (using Attribute Manager, as suggested).

I have no idea how I managed to delete the material - I probably shouldn't carry on working into the wee small hours!

I was wary of opening other files before I had a solution that would work in case the problem was going to repeat itself.