Materials and Finishes are not the same

[Paul_F_Aubin]

In all Autodesk products, materials are used to indicate both materials and finishes. This is not ideal. In reality, a material is what a thing is made of and a finish is simply how it is, well... finished.

How about some examples:

A wall is made of studs and drywall. These would be the materials. I would go to the lumber yard and buy studs and drywall to physically build this wall. But the finish is what I would apply on top of the wall to finalize it. This could include items like paint, tile, wall covering, paneling, wainscot, etc. 

A floor is made of joists (metal or wood), plywood or metal deck and concrete. But it can be finished with: carpet, tile, clear coat, paint or even hardwood. 

In the real World:

You cannot build a wall out of paint or tile. You build it from brick or drywall or studs, you finish it with paint or tile or wall covering.

You cannot build a floor out of carpet or vinyl tile. You build it from wood or concrete, you finish it with carpet or bamboo. 

I would like to see a Finish object separate from materials. And/or hierarchical materials. So finishes could be their own separate thing, or they could be a property of materials. I would prefer they be separate and referenced to materials so we could "mix and match". For example right now if I have four paint colors and planed to use them on varying surfaces like drywall, wood and concrete block. I would need to potentially repeat these "finishes" within the types of each category. Or I could define a separate material for the paint and then apply it as its own layer in the wall assembly (which is not ideal) or use the paint tool to apply it as an override on another layer (also not ideal), or define several variations of each "parent" material, such as: Drywall - Blue paint, Drywall - Red pain, Drywall - Green paint, Wood - Blue paint, etc. This is also not ideal. 

And in the case where a finish schedule is required, it is very difficult to achieve without manual hacks and silly work arounds. 

So please. Consider separating material from finish. And in the process, we get closer to the original intent of Revit: to build things in the software as close to how they are really built in reality as possible. 

Thank you. 

[Anonymous]

Great idea!!!!!!! Let's gooooo Revit 2018.1 here we gooooo....

[m.steffannoe]

Did I see right that the material databeses are different ones between diffrent Autodesk products like Revit, AutoCAD and 3DStudio?

Wouldn't it make it easier to create ONE material database for all programs? Shurely, each program has different needs of data whitin the material database. But data exchange would provide from this.

Rendering in 3Dstudio with a revit model would be an good example.

[GallowayUS_com_RonAllen1]

One material library for physical, thermal, render appearance and drafting appearance. Libraries for each with materials that link in each of these to their respective tabs.

[m.steffannoe]

This is a really good idea.



This way you could combine properties the way you need them without entering everything on creation of a new material.

[m.steffannoe]

This is a really good idea.



This way you could combine properties the way you need them without entering everything on creation of a new material.

[pieter4]

I strongly agree with this request but am a bit worried that it might complicate Revit materials even more. I see a lot of my colleagues struggle with the Revit material editor. Adding extra tabs and/or nesting could make it even more difficult to understand for non-expert users.

For example: the whole concept that the appearance tab can be shared seems to be very confusing for users. Sharing finish tabs might make it even more difficult to understand.

Perhaps strengthening and 'rebranding' the paint tool to a more versatile 'apply finish' tool could be a good start to open up a better workflow with regards to finishes.

In that framework, all Revit geometry could have two 'revit materials' assigned: 'base material' + '(painted) finish'.

- For walls/floors/ceilings/roofs: in the structure dialog you would have an extra (optional) layer (0 thickness) to apply a default material as painted finish on both sides.

- Inside component/inplace families we can already paint (e.g. finish) things using a parameter

By using the two methods above you can (purely optional) set up the 'default finish/paint' for any object but you could also leave it 'unfinished' per default (e.g. concrete columns).

Let's take the example of the door frame (steel) that is going to be finished with different paints. You would assign the material 'steel' to the geometry of the frame and the material 'white paint' as the default finish of the frame. But, there might be cases where the frame needs to be painted to match the finish of the adjacent (red) walls. In that case you could use the paint/apply-finish tool in the project environment and paint the door frame with the material 'red paint'. This would override the 'white paint' to 'red paint' (and thus change the scheduled area of both red paint and white paint).

For this to work, this bug with painting on component families would have to be fixed though.

Benefits of this approach

+ users don't have to change current workflows if you don't want to

+ the material editor does not become more complicated

+ the paint tool is strengthened (good for interior designers or design work)

+ the total number of materials in a project could go down because you can reuse them in different combinations (the same "white paint" material can be used as a finish on doors, walls and ceilings. Similarly the 'core materials' could 'gypsum' can also be shared by 5 different ceilings and 20 different walls etc.

+ the schedules already allow you to distinguish between normal materials and 'applied as paint', which could be used to build a finish schedule

Other ideas that could further strengthen this workflow

- Sample paint

- Phase paint

- Material tags that can read both the painted material (finish) and the underlying material at the same time

- Scheduling elements by category (ceilings): report all the materials they have been painted

- For good interopability the paint would have to be included in exports to 3dsmax and dwg (ideally without breaking the solid geometry).

[GallowayUS_com_RonAllen1]

@sasha.crotty  & @harlan_brumm

Just a shot in the dark- but- What if the finished were linked through the phasing to see if the pointer changed or referred to the previous pointer for the GUID? so each phase would represent a new super-set of GUIDs  that would defer to the previous set if empty? Then check against a 'finish' and require all 'finishes' to have an actual thickness (in mm or 1/256"). 

[Anonymous]

I would like to add to this discussion from my own experience of documenting architectural projects.  We end up with myriad wall types to account for all of the variations in structural make-up, concrete, blockwork, Dincel, studwork, etc.  and the various linings of plasterboard (in all their forms - fire-rated, impact-resistant, waterproof,etc), fibre cement, various claddings, etc.

I'd like to see walls be able to be used for the structural components only and then have a "lining" object that will snap to a wall face and would automatically adjust to changes in the underlying wall structure.  The lining object would automatically respect openings in the wall it is attached to without any specific interaction by the user.  The linings should also "clean-up" with other linings that have the same "finish/ colour" on all edges (including top and bottom - oh how I wish walls would do this!) This would speed documentation as for General Arrangement drawings we normally wouldn't show or dimension to the linings, so their visibility could be controlled with the detail level.  Documentation could proceed with a smaller number of wall types and the linings could be added later when things are "bedded down" more.  The addition of a linings object would also allow the elevational profile of the wall to differ from the linings to allow us to accommodate situations where, e.g., the plasterboard only extends to the ceiling but the wall frame extends to the slab above the ceiling.

The linings object would then have the ability to have the finish/ colour applied to it as for the subject of this Idea.  Colour-coded plans could easily be produced using view filters that show the linings in various colours making it easier for the sub-contractors to know where to place what plasterboard!

I think the concept of linings is related to this Idea but happy to post as a separate Idea if that is preferable.

[Anonymous]

Also so frustrating for interior designers. Having to show a wainscot tile by split face? Or painting a wall then not being able to tag it or schedule it? I have tried your (Paul's) work around with parts, but everytime I needed to combine parts it would lose the material and default to the original.

It really seems like Revit was never intended to be used by interior designers for documenting, which is ridiculous. We are a documenting just like architects on almost every project, but Revit is making our jobs so hard.

[GallowayUS_com_RonAllen1]

@Anonymous  Considered setting up ID.Finish1 - Finishxx parameters towards materials (named ID.Finishxx) and using schedule keys to manage palettes? I htink this approach might work. It wouldn't work for full color renders - those materials have to be applied directly, but takeoffs and schedules would work.

Dynamo can return the surfaces against a given wall/direction for some relative calculations as well : )

[kimberly_fuhrman-jones]

To reorganize and consolidate our Revit Ideas for ease of use to both our customers and our product teams, we are no longer using the "Future Consideration" status for Revit Ideas. All Revit Ideas are always under review, and consolidating posts (and Kudos!) will give weight to topics previously spread across many posts. We are continuing to evaluate where this request falls into our roadmap and will provide an update when we have made a decision. 

Thank you for your contribution!

-The Factory

[eblackburnEFFVJ]

I think the finishes should be better tied to Rooms, or even applied in the rooms based on the schedule. There are 3rd party solutions that do this (with the exception of ceilings...). Of course, you still would need override ability, achieved through the paint tool.

That way, it puts the I in BIM into the Finish Schedule so it's not dumb text entries.

That should make it way easier to quantify also, you know, for verifying bid estimates.

[GallowayUS_com_RonAllen1]

Would be fantastic if materials and surfaces connected to the surfaces they touched through rooms (Would require accurate room volumes- ther eis a PY routing that gathers these impressions) ... So Wall1 with sweep 1, 2, 3 and surface could be plugged into a key which could then define the color palette. 

Or split surfaces on a floor (Or adding flooring in areas - which usually coincides with "rooms" divided up in large spaces with room separation lines)

There is a whole language of finishes that shoudl be achievable in actual modeling content and application.

[eblackburnEFFVJ]

Yes. Rooms are surprisingly dumb in Revit. They don't auto-sense the height of the volume containing them. They don't track furniture and equipment placed within them. They conflict with Spaces and Zones from the MEP disciplines. Not intending to draw away from the OP topic of finishes/materials, but there is so much potential!

[ola6n4qrvdsr]

I agree with this idea, however it would get more support if you made the topic clearer -- True, Materials and Finishes are not the same thing -- the Wish List Idea is not contained here, so many forum users wouldn't read the longer description.

[stanfordG8BUY]

Speaking of definitions... Autodesk... please re-label curtain walls to system walls. A curtain wall in Revit is not a curtain wall in the real world (albeit it could be used for such)!

[sunsunxuanxuan]

Please help me,
Currently I can't do this:
1 Finishing the surface of the components is Loadable Families: (Casework, Curtainwall Panel, Door, Furniture, ... and Window)
Can't get painted surface area for above Loadable Families
3 How do we get the surface area parameters of the above Families, okay.

[kh_jea]

Agreed, this is necessary.

Painted surface isn't satisfactory, it never works how I need it to work.

[steve.fountain]

Given the gap that exists when making distinctions between materials and finishes, would it not be nice if walls (for instance) had true "finish" or "Coating" layers that could be assigned as instance parameters? These layers would have zero thickness (?) and be accessible from the instance properties palette AND they would be fully controllable via schedules. 

[amaruriM5PB4]

100% we need better ways to change wall finishes beyond wall types, so you can control what happens on each face