Material Physical Properties - Physical Properties vs. Identity

[danny.lewisA9QBW]

I'm (finally) putting together a nice clear material library and I've come across a quirk/setup for how they work that is just unbelievably stupid and unnecessarily complicated.

If you create a material, say you COPY an existing Document Material and paste it as a new one, or duplicate an existing document material. It will create a new IDENTITY, but it will map physical properties to some unknown background set of material properties (which are stored in A DIFFERENT MATERIAL, or it will create a duplicate material somewhere). These background materials can be referenced to multiple material identities... but good luck seeing where they are stored. If you hunt around enough, you'll find that it that it made a f'n mess in background. 

I would pose this question to Autodesk: "WHY are the material identities separate from the material physical properties???" 

If I'm create a new material.... I'M CREATING A NEW MATERIAL!!!! Not a new identity of a different material that I've already created!

If you're going to set it up so that people can point to the same material with 5 different names (eg. different languages)... then fine; SEPARATE OUT THE IDENTITIES AND PHYSICAL like you do for the materials and appearances!

[Frederick_Law]

Do not use duplicate or copy.

Add the material you want to "copy" to the document.

Change the name there and add back to the library.

Pay me $1 for every material you "copy" 😎

I spend a month or 3 to clean up my material after the 2012 change.

[danny.lewisA9QBW]

Your method is what I used to be doing... but that method doesn't sever the connection to the background physical properties.

eg. Added material to document library

Contains this 'material' as the physical properties

Renamed the document material

the background 'material' is still the ALLOY one. So if I have the two materials in my final library and I change the material properties on my 'NEW AWESOME MATERIAL', then it changes the physical properties of the old ALLOY material that i had.

[Frederick_Law]

I'm not sure if you want it to link or not.

You need to create a new Physical "Asset" and replace it in the New Material.

Each material has: Identity, Appearance and Physical.

If you use duplicate, you'll get a new ID, Appearance and Physical which is the same as the old one.

They're not linked to old copy.

You'll need to modify them all to what you need.

You can create a "Generic" with "Generic Appearance", "Generic Physical" and duplicate that to create new Material.

Create a new library and put all your creation in there.

[Frederick_Law]

The Identity is just a "name".

It can be "Blue Rubber", "Yellow Rubber".  Different Appearance but same Physical.

Sometimes there are same Physical with different name, CRS, Mild Steel, Steel.  304#4, 3042B, 304#2.

Most don't need the different in strength just density: 30W, 44W, 50W etc so they don't need a new Physical.

[danny.lewisA9QBW]

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@Frederick_Law wrote:

I'm not sure if you want it to link or not.

You need to create a new Physical "Asset" and replace it in the New Material.

Each material has: Identity, Appearance and Physical.

If you use duplicate, you'll get a new ID, Appearance and Physical which is the same as the old one.

They're not linked to old copy.

You'll need to modify them all to what you need.

You can create a "Generic" with "Generic Appearance", "Generic Physical" and duplicate that to create new Material.

Create a new library and put all your creation in there.

---

This is the issue that I'm pointing out. That there's three aspects of a 'material asset', but they're only listed as 'Materials' in the material browser. The physical asset library seems to be hidden somewhere in the background (or somewhere I haven't found) but what's shown in the material browser is a mush together of the physical assets and the identities.

When I look through the asset browser on any specific material, it list out all the material assets.

but they DON'T exist in my material styles library that they're apparently calling up.

Overall, if I'm create a new material, I'm creating a new Physical. PERIOD. If there's a new system where you create ID's that are essentially aliases for the physical that I've created, but it should be managed separately like the appearance library is separated from the material library.

[Frederick_Law]

What ever you copied/duplicated/rename will be in the Document ONLY until you save them into a Library.

[Frederick_Law]

Click them to open Asset for Appearance and Physical in Library.

You could save Appearance or Physical into different Library.

I think Material will save all 3.

[Frederick_Law]

And yes, this Material library setup is horrible and confusing.

[danny.lewisA9QBW]

yes... but my point is that there's extra crap being pointed to that is not in my document materials nor my material library that it came from.

This is correct. The physical material is the same as my identity.

This one... where is the 'steel' coming from? It's not in my document material (there's only two in my document), it's not in the material library it came from.... so it's likely coming from the default autodesk material libraries. But WHY have such a horrible system where I put in a material but it's got a background reference to somewhere else.

[Frederick_Law]

Well it depend where the Material came from.

You have 6 Libraries.  All could have similar and duplicated "asset"

The "stock" AutoCAD and Inventor Libraries have duplicates.

I'll say all Material were copied from "stock" at some point in time.

There were some got imported from IV before 2012.  It was a huge mess. Lots of (95261) Appearance and Physical created.

Unless you have created all those material carefully selecting Appearance and Physical from same Library, otherwise they will be all over the place.

Here is my 1018:

You could remove some Library in Project to limit what you can pick.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Folks,

I cannot comment on why it works this way but I can explain how it works. A Material style (common to most Autodesk products) consists of two assets, Appearance and Physical. I guess some of the Material styles share the same Physical asset but with different Appearance assets.

It does sound like a custom library might work better for you.

Many thanks!