topic Re: Linked IFC - Change Material in Revit Architecture Forum

Linked IFC - Change Material

and.magro — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 09:48:17 GMT

Hello,

Is it possible to change the material of an imported/linked IFC file?

I can use "Bind Link" → "Edit Group" → "Ungroup" and manually override the color of the element, but this is not the desired solution since I would need to do this in every view.

I already created a Project Parameter, changed the Material, but it did not affect the element.

BTW, sometimes "strange" (duplicate, new elements, etc) things happen to the geometry when using "Bind Link."

Thanks

Re: Linked IFC - Change Material

and.magro — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 16:02:07 GMT

Three days without any answer!

Is the layoff already taking effect?

Re: Linked IFC - Change Material

RDAOU — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 17:16:50 GMT

@and.magro

99% of the contributors on this forum are not on Autodesk’s payroll sheet…

if your post gets rolled down due to new posts, it might have been missed. In such case you could tag one of the top contributors or someone who helped you previously using the @ to get their attention .

Re: Linked IFC - Change Material

and.magro — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 17:30:56 GMT

@ToanDN
Little help here please.

Thanks

Re: Linked IFC - Change Material

ToanDN — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 20:09:13 GMT

You need to open the IFC, change materials, then save it as RVT and link the RVT.

Re: Linked IFC - Change Material

RDAOU — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 15:44:22 GMT

IFC components in general, and those from different software in particular, are Direct Shapes. IE: The material they came with is not editable.

To re-assign a material to a Direct Shape, it would need to be recreated as a native revit element

Re: Linked IFC - Change Material

TripleM-Dev.net — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 21:10:26 GMT

Best bet is to open the IFC in revit to convert to RVT and not link+bind.

As @ToanDN post.

When a IFC is linked revit creates directshapes (and maybe materials for it, depending the IFC). The directshapes are ReadOnly object. If a material was added to it, that can be edited but no easy way of knowing which.

When a IFC is opened revit will try to create native revit object from it. mind you it depends on the the ifc and how the source editor made it. It still could be un-editable (if it was a 3D dwg import)

- Michel

Re: Linked IFC - Change Material

luisPDAN6 — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 12:29:34 GMT

ran into the same issue recently.

For a linked IFC, Revit usually won’t let you fully reassign materials the way it does for native families. What worked for me was:

Open the IFC so Revit creates the .ifc.rvt
Change materials in that source model
Reload it back into the main project

If your IFC objects are already coming in as DirectShapes and you need a faster workaround for texture reassignment, this guide helped me a lot:
https://goto.archi/blog/post/how-to-change-ifc-textures-in-revit-directshape-workflow