How to add a new material

[iainsavage]

MEP engineer asking an architectural question so please be gentle with responses!

Is there a way to add a new building material to a project rather than editing existing ones? - every time that I try to add a new material I seem to have to duplicate an existing material, rename it and then import the applicable asset properties into the duplicated version but I can't see a way of just creating a new material from scratch.

Searched the Autodesk help and it wasn't much assistance on this topic.

[hmunsell · Accepted solution]

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@iainsavage wrote:

but I can't see a way of just creating a new material from scratch.

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[iainsavage]

I feel a bit stupid - I had already done that but it creates a material called Default New Material and I thought that this was existing and I was going to be changing something which already existed in the model. I suppose the clue was the "New" part of the name.

Follow up then: how do you create or duplicate a thermal asset in the Autodesk Physical asset library to use in future projects? The library seems to be locked. I can edit them in the project but to retain them for future use in other projects I assume that I first need to copy the asset to a user library before I can amend/duplicate it? Is this correct? 

[hmunsell]

if i remember correctly the thermal/physical libraries are locked. you can duplicate the property in the material in your project, but cant edit the Physical Assets library its self. 

[barthbradley]

Is this what you are looking to do?

Press the PLUS sign and the select "Thermal" or "Physical" to open the Asset Browser and select a Thermal or Physical Asset to assign to the Material.

[iainsavage]

No, I want to create a new thermal asset with different values to the ones in the autodesk library.

I can add an asset to the model, duplicate it and amend it but then it is not available for use in other models.