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. 

[Bfglunz]

Another example I would add to this is the application of a finish to a mullion in a curtain wall. Currently we can only assign one material to this, ie aluminum. If you want to add an actual metal coating to this you are are faced with the difficult decision of whether or not to have your mullion take on the properties of the metal coating instead of the aluminum itself.

[sumex]

Paul, I'm 1000% in agreement with this.

As you use paint as an example, coatings are actually a system in their own right. I run into this all the time with roofing, waterproofing / dampproofing and especially PAINT. Each system is comprised of a primer specific to the substrate, and finish coat(s) defined by their purpose or desired appearance (or both). Since they're less than 1/16 of an inch, they cannot be graphically shown / annotated.  Now a greater disconnect with paint is material vs color.  Take Ben Moore as an example...  They have 1500 colors in their palette, which they proud of and want to have available for use. Couple this with the 16 different paint brands they sell (Aura, Ben, SuperSpec, etc), and further multiply that by the 4 sheens that can be selected (Eggshell, Flat, Semi-Gloss, Gloss), you're now approaching 100,000 unique materials that would need to be selected.

Completely unrealistic to build as things stand, especially since the Render assets currently have no API to automate the development, maintenance or selection of these 100k materials.  A trick I've used was to create the colors and sheens (6000 was hard enouogh). and a material parameter simply called "Material" that is assigned to materials so that it can at least be selected from a inside of the Finish Color.  It's a hack I know, but it heads in the right direction...

Which brings me to my next point...

Why can't we categorize custom material parameters such that they ALL don't show up in every material.  Once you drop them into a project environment, the list of empty custom parameters would be HUGE. Scratch hardness is very relevant to Tile and Flooring but irrelevant to drywall or carpet.

Another example is glass, which has several has issues as well...  Glass is made up of multiple panes with an interlayer sandwiched within it...  And that is ONE pane...  What about sealed IGU's.  Inner Pane, outer pane, sealed gaseous space; and in every new window...  But all we have is an extrusion that calls out what "Material" is, while there are millions of combinations which directly affect the U Factor, SHGC and VLT of the window.  Oh yeah, and there is reflective and color to contend with also.

To go a step further, having materials be capable of assignment to System Family Layer Functions (Structural, Substrate, Finish 1, etc) and expanding those categories would make Revit more intuitive as well, and I would strongly argue that a material should be its own "family" since there are so many moving parts to them...

I could go on and on with improvements to materials... but I'd rather settle for a Render Asset API and just do them myself.

[B.Fetzer]

+1

And think about Phases.

If you like to paint a wall in Phase "New" in yellow and in Phase "2017" in green, you will get a problem in schedules for this painting material (Material "as color" or in German "wie Farbe"). You can only overwrite this "old" material.

Kind regards,

Bernhard

[GallowayUS_com_RonAllen1]

@B.Fetzer materials and phasing - huge! Have been modeling replacement skins to demolish- but 0-thickness objects cannot do that so the whole gyp face + paint has to be demolished. Would love to attach phases to sub-elements. 

@Paul_F_Aubin would need to have demolish quick-menus to tap a wall surface (worst-case 3d) and then have dialogs to determine how much to delete. Can we kind-of do this now by dividing elements into sub-parts?

Revit for interiors next? ! : )

The floor materials don't bother me so much- I typically have my floor (substrate) and my 'carpet + Padding' or 'tile + set' which vary and cut into the 2nd 'substrate' family so the A.F.F. is always 0'-0" for my t.o. finishes.

[B.Fetzer]

@GallowayUS_com_RonAllen1: For flooring (carpets, epoxy painting and so on) and also for painting of Ceilings we are using "Basic Ceiling" because this kind of Family can use Phases and is "Zero height".
But this doesn't work for Wallpainting
For Tiles (on Floor and Wall) we create seperate Families (Wall and Ceiling) with its specific thickness.

Kind Regards, Bernhard

[Anonymous]

A good tool would be something similar to the paint tool, that could apply a finish with a thickness, we are asked to produce a model of our works only (Building Envelope Contractor). If we are creating something like a hot melt polymeric bitumen roof it is very difficult to model as we are not responsible for the underlying concrete deck. We can model the flat portion of the roof with the roof tool as we can create a composite roof type for the main roof area, however, when it comes to the upstands etc, modelling the hotmelt up and over these becomes a pain. I know we could just paint the faces but this doesn't then allow for the thickness of the system (10mm), that can affect other items such as cappings, clearances to BMU tracks. I suppose it is the difference between BIM of Architect and BIM for detailed construction & contractor design.

[GallowayUS_com_RonAllen1]

For finishes using the membrane layer- if you could substitute or paint it with a "demo" or associate a phase created with applied 'painting' of surfaces using the 'paint' tool.

[Anonymous]

Absolutely agree 🙂

In MEP, an example is pipework, whereby there is a "Material" (finish) and also a "Material" (the actual material: pipe thickness and roughness, etc.). The type is typically named as a material anyway, so this is pretty messy as you could end up with a type called copper, with a material of steel and a finish material of flourescent red if you really wanted.

One more thing about this: in the system settings you can assign a default material to each system type, but unfortunately it's actualy the finish, which is pretty useless; it should be the actual material.

Thanks for the suggestion,

Ben

[sasha.crotty]

Thanks for your submission and votes on this idea!  We are evaluating where this request falls into our roadmap and will provide an update when we have made a decision. 

The Factory

[sumex]

Huzzah for improvement!!!!  I've got a gazillion thoughts on the improvement of materials and how Revit handles them.

And I'm still begging for a Render Asset API 😉

[B.Fetzer]

@sasha.crotty: Before making a decision about materials please look at the linked PDF (5MB, 29 Sheets, documented by me)

Material Inventor and Revit 2017.pdf

This is a call from me since more than 5 Releases. Every year 😞

If you need more Information please contact me by mail.

Thank's and good luck for this decision 😉

Kind Regards, Bernhard

[GallowayUS_com_RonAllen1]

'Sub' wall types created from demolition of a membrane, finish level, etc. 

A01- MEMB1+GYP+STUD+GYP+MEMB2

transparently integrate to demolish just the GYP off the wall... would be a new wall type, but the studs are not demolished- so we either have to manually separate the wall into parts (A01.a MEMB1+GYP)(A01 Studs)(A01.b GYP+MEMB2) demolish/reinstate the parts in phases. and membrane 'finishes' won't do this aforementioned.

@Paul_F_Aubin Do you believe the materials in the wall components should be phased accordingly to the sub components for re-instating or modification later? This lends itself to a non-destructive editing process

[Anonymous]

While we are talking about fixing materials, can we please have a fix for the paint tool bug, this has existed forever, I have submitted it as a bug report, only to be told that it is working as designed. This only leads me to believe that Autodesk doesn't understand how real world objects are built. I have attached a detailed explanation of the bug, but basically the bug is, when a family or other object has used the paint tool to apply a finish to a face, this material becomes the material on any face that is cut, whether this be by a section, section box or cut void. Surely the material of the object should be the default not the finish.

Darren

[cprettyman]

Paul

I'm so glad you posted this, and I'm even more pleased to see that its under consideration.  I think that you made the case well, so I'll just add examples to the record, in the hopes that they help move this to "SOON" rather than "Eventually" on the roadmap.

I suspect that around 80% of the interior partitions I have placed are some minor variation of a 3-5/8 stud with one layers of GWB on each side. (the variation being whether its rated, whether it has acoustical insulation, etc.).  As a result, 2 or 3 wall types cover 80% of my interior partitions.  But, if I had to make the finish part of the wall materials, instead of one family for a basic stud wall, I would need something like

- 3-5/8" stud with blue painted GWB on both sides

- 3-5/8" stud with green painted GWB on both sides

- 3-5/8" stud with blue painted GWB on one side and green painted GWB on the other

- 3-5/8" stud with blue panted GWB on one side and wall covering on the other

- 3-5/8" stud with green painted GWB on one side and wall covering on the other

You may need each of  those repeated for combinations of fire rating, acoustic insulation, height of GWB (to ceiling, to structure, etc) and anything else that your office treats as a type property

The list gets longer and harder to manage as the number of paints and wall coverings increase, and it quickly becomes a management nightmare.

As you noted, one finish can span multiple surfaces and multiple substrates.  It can also span across elements placed at different phases.  So, a single paint color might be placed across a new GWB partition, onto an existing exterior wall, then onto a new CMU enclosure for an existing column, and onto the ceiling.  But, in addition to spanning across multiple elements, one element could have several paint colors.  For example, different colors above and below a chair rail.  Or, I can imagine a great many instances where a single wall object is part of several rooms, and may have different finishes in each of them.

In considering "Finishes" as a category, I would also love to see an update to the way Revit handles finish carpentry.  Placing sweeps on walls works, mostly.  But there is plenty of room for improvement.  Try wrapping your base molding around a column (pier) for example, or have a molding that stops short of the end of a wall, and the profile returns on itself.  Or have a picture rail that turns and runs vertically for a section to follow the profile of a ceiling.  

Thanks

[harlan_brumm]

We've completed our review of this idea. After investigating the effort required to implement this request, we unable to add it to our roadmap at this time due to other priorities. However, we think this is a great idea so we will reconsider it as we made adjustments to our roadmap in the future. Thanks for the submission and keep voting!

The Factory

[Christiaan_de_Wit]

I've been struggling a lot with finishes in Revit and I've been thinking a lot about how the software could be improved to help get what I need.

What I would really like to see is "Finish Categories"!

An important improvement should be a connection between the Finishes parameters of Rooms and this new to-be-created Finish Categories.

The Base Finish parameter would be a collection of Wall, Ceiling and Floor Finishes that are managed in a "Finishing Schema Builder": a menu where one can create a schema which has:

• a code (text field)
• wall finish type (to be selected from a list with the option to duplicate an existing type)
• floor finish type (same)
• floor finish placement method (on top of room base level or a given offset from the room's base level)
• floor finish offset (grayed out if placement method is set to 'on top')
• ceiling finish type (same as wall finish type)
• ceiling finish placement method (follows room bounding elements, as specified in room's ceiling height parameter, or at a given offset from room's top level)
• ceiling finish offset (grayed out if placement method is set to 'follow')

The Wall, Ceiling and Floor finish parameters will stay intact, but by default they will inherit the value as specified in the base finish and be grayed out.

The specified finishes will be placed automatically after the base finish is chosen for a room (from within the properties palette or from a schedule (or an add-in like Dynamo). The finishes will automatically be joined with the walls and floors they are placed on. Due to performance requirements you might need an override switch (like we have for the room volume calculation) or a postpone button, so you can select all base finish schemes first and then let Revit do the placement while getting coffee for the whole office crew.

About the finish families:

• They all need some basic parameters of course: type mark, physical, thermal and acoustic properties, keynote, assembly code, description, etcetera. 
• The wall finish family should have layers, optional sweeps (like in a wall), and an option to wrap inside an opening until it hits a window or door family. There should also be an offset from floor finish and an offset from ceiling finish (we are used to place tiles up to 100 mm above the ceiling level)
• The floor finish family should have layers, optional sweeps around the edges (ignoring door openings automatically) and an alignment point that can be moved without having to edit a sketch.
• The ceiling family needs two approaches. One has layers like the current compound ceiling family. The other one definitely needs an optional grid. Many of us are currently (ab)using sloped glazing as a substitute of the ceiling family. The curtain wall functionality works fine though, so it would be nice to have that functionality within the correct category. Keep in mind that in some cases you might want to include the ceiling as a whole within the base finish schema and in other cases you might only want to include some finishing layers like plaster and paint.

After the automatic placement of the schema's finishes, one should have the ability to unpin the finishes from the room's definition to make exceptions. Therefor you would need the possibility to manually place finish families. They could work a lot like walls, floors and ceilings/sloped glazing as we know them now, or like painting the family on top of a wall, floor or ceiling. Split Face would be a nice option too (I can see the possibilities with Dynamo using the Split Face command to insert a jpg-based logo or picture in a finish family).

Another issue is an easy to read 2D representation of vertical finishes. Back in the 2D-cad days we used to draw colored lines along the walls with a legend that explained what those colors represented. For readability, those colored lines had a certain offset from the wall. We have some projects where we added the wall finishes as thin walls by hand and we tried to use filters to give those thin walls a color like we were used to. But for readability the wall thickness was too small to give the colored line enough offset from the wall. I would like to see an integrated solution within the vertical finish families to solve this problem. Like selecting a line type and an offset from wall. Or a color coded wall finish tag that stretches along the tagged element.

I have not thought about everything yet , the next issues need some attention too:

• some finishes need another subsurface than you might have included in the wall, floor or ceiling that it is placed on. So you need to be able to find the relationship between the finish and the sub element.
• the combination of the finish structure and the structure of the sub element might have influence on the combined properties (acoustic resistance / absorption, thermal resistance, fire resistance, ...). How do you prevent tagging (and calculating) only part of the whole truth?
• how will window and door families define the location of the finish wrapping at inserts (on both sides of the wall). Is the current wall wrapping reference plane sufficient?
• how do you make window and door families 'see' that - after a wall finish is placed - the interior / exterior of the wall (as defined by the reference planes in the family) got an offset?

[Anonymous]

I have circumvented this by assigning the painted material as a parameter, linking that to a shared parameter within the type properties and then assigning that to a global parameter that I have created in my project template. It was a lot of work, and it had to be done for each family I created, but it works. Now when I assign a material to the global parameter, say "PLAM-1", Every face in the entire project that has been painted in the family editor with the "Laminate" parameter, then had its Laminate parameter tied to PLAM-1 is finished with that material, while maintaining its actual material.

[Anonymous]

I think AutoDesk just assumed that most designers using BIM as opposed to art software like 3DSMax are not interested in the render, and are (or working for) architects who aren't actually going to build the project and therefore not interested in the finish. But some of us actually work for the companies constructing what we're designing, and would like to schedule those materials. Also, it'd be nice if my clients had an easy way to assign materials and finishes. That way they'd be more likely to do so, resulting a more accurate quote from (and less work for) me.

[GallowayUS_com_RonAllen1]

@Anonymous Slick idea! You may be able to skip a step by assigning placeholder materials you can switch out (Much like interiors directs finishes for P01, P02, P03, etc.) I know Globals can get a bit sticky and cumbersome : )

[Anonymous]

I use Objects Styles and set them all to either "By Category" or a placeholder, then assign the category to the base material. I only use globals for the laminates and stone (in the case of multiple countertop materials). Basically any standard material is by category and any client specified materials is a global.