Material Cloning

[Anonymous]

In a previous post i asked how can i change material globally, that is change all windows from aluminum to wood or railing from steel to chromium and so on.

Some suggested that i should create generic materials (window material, wall material 1, wall material 2) and later change according to what i thought was appropriate.

That solution was indeed great BUT

i have a library of materials already creatted and nicely working, can i copy properties say from wood to an EXISTING material e.g window shutters material?

Not create a new copy but create a copy and assign that to an existing one.

Thx

[Anonymous]

This is not quite what you are thinking but will have the same effect.

1. Delete the material you want change.
2. Duplicate the material you want to use.
3. Name the duplicate the same as the one you deleted.

ArchiCAD assigns materials by name so a new material of the same name as the deleted one will be applied to the elements that use it.

[Anonymous]

I thought of that.. but imagine you are trying to decide on smthg and chnge constanly materials...
This will be a nightmare....


Maybe i should move this to the wish list

[Anonymous]

I know. It's not great, but it's all we have for now.

BUT... I suppose you might be able to do something with Attribute Manager. Still more trouble than it should be though.

(I am off to the wish list. This has just reminded me of a long standing wish that I don't think I have ever posted. See "New Material Settings")

[Link]

This can be done very quickly using the Attribute Manager. I encourage setting up default materials in your template file, that are assigned to each building element. Eg. Default Roofing, Default Flooring, Default Ceiling, Default Object, etc. These default materials can be simply copies of 'Whitewash'. This way when you first render you model, everything is just white, similar to a styrofoam model 'from the old days' . The client doesn't get distracted by the crazy colors you've picked and you can very quickly swap out materials globally, using the methods described in my tip. I will post this as a separate thread in 'Working in ArchiCAD', here in the next few minutes...

Cheers,
Link.