Linking Materials and textures an a BIM360 cloud shared model

[RachelAndrews]

We are looking for a method where multiple users can access a project material file and textures on a cloud work-shared model.

We are experiencing that when one user applies textures to materials, the other users lose access to them, and their models appear without textures.

Is there a way all users can path to a shared materials library that contains the textures for all to view?

[RDAOU]

@RachelAndrews 

The material library file doesn't need to be on the cloud, you can have it on your local. It being on the cloud cause significant lag and Revit could stop responding every time you try to load and access the material library through the Material browser. 

Even if you save the Material Library on on a remote physical server it would still be better than the could

[RachelAndrews]

Hello.  

Thank you for your reply but it doesn't answer the question asked.

I am not wanting the materials library to be on the cloud, and we do already have the materials library on a local server, however, users within the same office are not able to see the textures applied to a BIM 360 cloud collaborated model elements when working collaboratively.

It seems that only one user can access these textures and other users working on the same model then loose the textures on their workstation. Our designers work with real-time rendering software on a daily basis and loosing the link to the Materials library assets is causing major issues in our standard workflows.

is there something that we are missing in the routing Revit to the materials library?  

Please note that on server based work-shared models we do not have this problem.

I would appreciate any more advice,  thanks

[RachelAndrews]

Thank you for your reply, however, it doesn't answer my query.   We do house our materials library on a local server, and this works when working on a server based work-shaered model.   we are having problems when our models are collaborated to BIM360.  it seems that only one user can route to the materials library and all other users loose the textures on their workstations.   Our users are designing with real-time rendering software and require each workstation to be able to access the material textures.  

Has anyone else come across this issue, if not please can you advise where the materials are saved and how the routing from each workstation is resolved,  

Thanks

[RDAOU]

@RachelAndrews 

You original post did not mention anything about a real time 3D rendering software; therefore I apologize for the misunderstanding...Has this Live 3D Rendering application and its plugin been customized for cloud based worksharing? Best would be to check with the developer of the 3rd party application you are using. 

When working with Cloud workshared models, files are cashed and saved to the following path C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Autodesk\Revit\<Autodesk Revit Version>\CollaborationCache and are associated with a GUID relevant to a particular workshared Revit model on the cloud. However, the data stored in CollaborationCash do get dumped regularly; therefore, the 3rd party app/plugin should be designed to always access the cashed model of the Live Revit session...to do that it needs to fetch the GUID of the Model from the journal of that open session and remap the file location/path to the relevant cashed model in the CollaborationCash folder. 

That is how we reconfigured most of our external application when we moved from server to cloud based worksharing.

[ebryantUBMMB]

We are experiencing the same issue as you @randrewsRUZ7P 

We have recently moved to BIM360 from our local server and finding that when one user loads a new material (Material is located on Autodesk Desktop Connector) the finish will only appear on that users workstation. Another user will then go and re-link that material (from the exact same file path) and load in, this material then disappears from the original users end. So whoever loads the material in is the only user that can see the material.

Have you been able to resolve this issue? It's very painful when multiple users are trying to work on the one project and create rendered views (revit and enscape) and the material is only ever being visible on 1 users workstation and all other users will show the material as a missing link.

Thanks

[ianmcnairyarchitecture]

I'm having the same issue happen while using Revit 2022.1 and BIM collaborate pro with a workshared model. The custom material images are hosted on a shared drobox site with the same file path on each station. When my assistant linked the materials into her model I am finding that all of my materials are gone and need to be re-linked. This doesn't happen when we work on the same file from the same dropbox folder so I don't know quite where the info is getting lost. Has anyone resolved this issue?

[chris-sms]

Also having this same issue. Cloud models create as many problems as they solve. Revit should be able to identify paths relative to user's home folder, but that doesn't work. Revit should ABSOLUTELY be able to identify paths in a shared cloud resource, but for some reason that doesn't work either. The Desktop Connector is trash. I wish Autodesk would generate solutions instead of roadblocks. And it's disingenuous to blame 3rd party plugin authors who are only working in the ecosystem Autodesk provides.

Here is a hacky work-around that seems functional for one of our teams: if you put the resources in a shared dropbox folder, each user moves their dropbox root folder to an identical path on their machine (ie, not under the user's folder, but instead something like D:\Dropbox\...) and each user ensures that the folder is sync'd locally (check "make available offline") then the material maps appear on each machine. 

[RTempleV4GAA]

We're encountering the same. To make matters worse, our shared "server" is MS SharePoint, so every path to shared resources is really to each users local cache.

My immediate problem is sharing material assets with an outside Interior Designer. Model sharing works fine through ACC (BIM360), but she needs to see our textures for rendering.

[GRyan_MN]

To the initial question,. that is our typical workflow and have not had any issues for local pathing to Appearance Asset textures for cloud hosted models other than bad paths, typically saved instead to local desktops or to a server and neglecting to connect to a vpn if working remotely.  I use an Ideate schedule that allow you to schedule materials and include their Appearance Texture path to look for these issues.

For hosting materials on Docs, the path will work between separate users but they all have to set the folder they are saved in as an Additional Render Appearance Path. 

[RTempleV4GAA]

Thanks for responding.

Unfortunately, everything in our network appears as a local path because both SharePoint and Autodesk Desktop Connector cache within the user profile.
I found a solution from Aaron Waller that appears to work well, especially now that ADC will sync automatically.
Revit Render Assets on BIM360 – Parallax Team

[GRyan_MN]

that is an older article, As of Revit 2023,   Material Asset pathing to Docs drops the local user portion of the path, but everyone accessing them has to add the folder they are saved in to the Additional Render Appearance Path within their Revit Options / Rendering settings.  We are using this to share rendering assets between separate design firms.

[RTempleV4GAA]

Thanks for that. It's worth exploring.

Is this documented somewhere? I didn't find anything applicable in official sources. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places.

One complication is Enscape. Unless it can access the ACC path directly, I think I'll need to use ADC, anyway.

[BrettTN9JM]

Hi there, 

Could you please explain this further? Currently trying to figure out how to map materials from a local server that consultants don't have access to. Trying to avoid creating a "materials" folder in the cloud. 

Thanks in advance!