Change Material of A Nested Generic Model

[hliS658H]

I have a louver family and it has a nested blade family; When I change the louver family material, it only affects the frame but not the blades - looks like it is a generic model.

How can I not dig into the blade family just edit the material in Object Style? I couldn't find the right one to edit, not sure which category doesn't blade belong to? I tried Louver, it didn't work.

[mhiserZFHXS · Accepted solution]

You're going to have to go into the model to figure it out. Who knows what the original creator assigned as the subcategory for the blades.

You should probably just fix the family and make sure there is a material parameter for the blade family, and then link that to a material parameter in the main family. You could assign it to the same parameter as the frame, or you could make a new one so the frame and the blades have their own materials.

[ToanDN · Accepted solution]

---

@hliS658H wrote:

I have a louver family and it has a nested blade family; When I change the louver family material, it only affects the frame but not the blades - looks like it is a generic model.

How can I not dig into the blade family just edit the material in Object Style? I couldn't find the right one to edit, not sure which category doesn't blade belong to? I tried Louver, it didn't work.

---

Even if you can figure out what subcategory the blade is under, you can only change it's material via object styles IF the blade element 's material in the family is assign By Category.  Do it the easy way by editing the family and choosing a proper action depends on what you find out.

[gsucci · Accepted solution]

There are two ways you can control the material of the blade, as also indicated by the other responders.

1. Assign a material parameter to the geometry of the blade in the blade family, and in the family where that blade is used link a material parameter to that parameter.  in the project you can then assign a material to that family parameter.

2. Assign a new sub-category to the blade geometry.  It should propagate and be shown in the object style of the project where you can change material and graphics for it.

Hope it helps.

Gio