Can't Change Materials (without them disappearing!)?

[Anonymous]

I know that it is a bit late in the day for Revit 2011, but I'm having some material problems that are causing issues:

1. If I alter any render material, or duplicate & then alter  (in the Materials dialogue box, Render Appearance tab)  by replacing the 'Render Material based on' material with a different one from the Autodesk Library, or even just changing the colour of a material, it doesn't show up in a render. Any geometry with that material on it disappears!

2. The Shading section on the Graphics tab of the Materials dialogue box is not working for these changed materials either. If I select 'Use Render Appearance for Shading', the colour shows as 204-153-000. Every time, no matter what!

I'm pretty sure that this must relate back to paths to libraries or something like that, as ITs original install image wasn't too good (maybe the original path is missing)? But I don't know how to check if Revit is looking in the right place, other than using the 'additional render appearance paths' in the Application Button>Options>Rendering tab. But the name 'additional' makes me think it not replacing the original path, just adding to it?

I've got the latest (2011) build installed (20110218_1300), along with all of the patches and hot fixes etc.

Any suggestions please?

[ryan.duell · Accepted solution]

I have seen some reports of this issue; I have included 2 posts below which will hopefully resolve the issue:

http://revitclinic.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/02/troubleshooting-elements-that-disappear-when-render...

http://revitclinic.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/06/the-rendering-or-render-appearance-library-previews...

Thank you,

[Anonymous]

Hmmm, very interesting! Thanks for the links. I forgot to mention that this was affecting only 1 workstation. I  did a drive cleanup - deleting all of the temp files, and I also deleted all the files in the 'Temp' folders in both the Windows folder and the user's Appdata>Local>Temp. For good measure I also deleted any temp files in the user's appdata revit related folders.

And it worked! The materials that had disappeared now rendered as expected and the 'Use Render Appearance for Shading' checkbox works as expected again!

Thank you!