Design Options for Materials

[Anonymous]

Wouldn't it be grand if you could test out different materials by swapping out the underlying definition in a design option? Say I've got 10 different objects (wall types, maybe a ceiling, some curtain wall profiles, curtain wall panels) that are all RED but I'm interested in seeing some design options for BLUE and GREEN or WOOD or CONCRETE... Currently the only way to achieve that is to manually alter the material definition or swap out the asset for something else. Offering a temporary and managed switch in design options would be a fantastic way of managing this process.

[Intuos5]

How about a material dropdown set, where you can specify which materials you'd like to use. These are added to the parameter and can be picked from a dropdown. That way, you'll only need to assign the correct parameters and edit those.

[NmaguyCKB3M]

I think you would want to create a temporary mode that you can enter.  Similar to temporary view properties.  The difference would be that you can save the scheme as a "material option".  So you would have the actual materials for the model that are applied to each component,  then you can enter into the "Material Option" mode, change all the materials, and save that material scheme as Option 1, etc.   It would be nice if this worked like the paint tool, so you can just select surfaces and change their material easily, rather than going through type properties etc.   This would require another tab to appear in your VG just as it currently functions for design options.  So you can have a view of the base model materials or utilize a material scheme set up in these new options.  This would be a huge time saver and a massive move forward for visualization.