Material selection problem -- Images attached

[Anonymous]

I have an issue with choosing materials that's been driving me INSANE for the last 24 hrs.

I'll be as thorough as I possiby can.

I've designed a Theatre Room within my home. Within the room are speakers and panels on the walls. There are Front speakers, Rear speakers, a Sub-woofer and finally, acoustic wall panels.

The front speakers are all the same type (same family) and just duplicated. The Rear speakers are another family, as is the Subwoofer and the panels on the walls. So to be clear, there are four distinct familes created at a completely different point in time from one another.

Each family has a material created (from new) and assigned to it. I did this through the family editor when they were being created and they show up in the material browser as they should.

Look at image 1 that I attached. That's how everything SHOULD look..

Now, if I go to my material browser and choose say, the Front speakers -- and change the colour to Blue, for example -- EVERYTHING changes to Blue! (image 2)

This has also happened with other things such as my floor material (floorboards) showing up on certain walls -but I won't get into that.

Why is this happening and why does Revit hate me?!

[L.Maas]

First of all Revit does not hate you. With that out of the way lets have look at this.

Problem is while you explained some things it is not enough to solve your problem. For this it would be best to have a look at the relevant part of your project.

Depending on your required endresult there are many ways to assign materials to your components. In your family you can assign materials to your parts (extrusions a, sweeps etc) directly. You can also use parameters. Further you can assign materials through your object styles settings.

When the family is in your project you can use graphics overrides to further modify the materials

Another important note. The materials in your project override the materials in your family. For example if you have assigned material PLASTIC in your family which color is blue. If in your project is already a material named PLASTIC, which is black. When loading your family into the project your family becomes....black.

From the above you can see that there are lots of ways to influence material of your family. If you could upload the relevant parts of your project we can have a look at how everything is setup in your families and project. Maybe you can upload it here or otherwise to something like dropbox/wetransfer.

[Anonymous]

Enllt, thank you for your kind reply. Would it help if I gave you the project file or family file? (I'm relatively new to revit so I'm unsure how to give you the relevant parts)

[L.Maas]

Best would be to have the project file. Than it is clear how yout families are setup and what settings are in your project. Both might have an impact.

If your file is large than you will have to use dropbox/wetransfer or similar and post the link so that I can download it. If neede you can send the link as private message.

[Anonymous]

Ok no problems. I've uploaded to Google Drive here (5mb) :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7YMoZ3zuhdMU3VOdUxnemE0SUE/view?usp=sharing

Thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it!

[L.Maas · Accepted solution]

Ok had a look at it. Here is where it goes wrong.

See your 3 Krix material on the left? If you go to the apearance tab of each of them you will see they all use the "Generic(1)" Appearnace asset.To be exact you can even see that the same "Appearance" asset is used by 8 different materials (indicated by the 8 above the hand icon).

So when you change the Generic 1 Appearance settings all 8 materials will change because they share this same appearance asset.

In some cases this might be a desired effect. However in your case it is not.

The solution is to choose a new appearance asset or duplicate the present one.

You will have to repeat this for all the 8 materials, to make sure that every material uses an unique appearance asset.

This sharing of the appearance asset can be a timesaver if used in a controlled way.

[Anonymous]

A thousand thank yous!!!

So, just to be clear for myself and anyone else having this issue in the future -- everytime I create a new material, I should be duplicating the asset so it's not shared with other materials (unless I want that) ?

[L.Maas]

Yes, or choose one of the available assets. The number always will indicate if the material is shared by other materials.

That is why it might be useful to create your own user library. Further many people will use names that will clearly make them identifiable. For example the initials from the company. This will avoid this problem when using models & materials from other sources. For example a simple name like Steel might be used by other sources too, and suddenly you have a shared asset.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I've just set this up, but I need a solution for my widow/door? Reflective or Absorptive?

Regard

Paul

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hi,

I've just set this up, but I need a solution for my widow/door? Reflective or Absorptive?

Regard

Paul

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