Saturday, April 8, 2017

Duplicating a Material and its Assets

This is a page out of my Interior Design book, which I am updating right now for a future version of Revit... and a related Revit Idea, which I wrote about yesterday.

Duplicating a Material and its assets:
It is important to know how to properly duplicate a Material in your model so you do not unintentionally affect another Material.

If you Duplicate a Material in your model, the Appearance Asset will be associated to the new Material AND the Material you copied it from! For example, in Figure 4-2.18, we will right-click on Carpet (1) and duplicate it. Before we duplicate it, notice the Appearance Asset named “RED” is not shared (arrow #3 Figure 4-2.18).

Figure 4-2.18 Duplicating a material
Once you have duplicated a Material, notice the two carpet materials, in this example, now indicate they both share the same Appearance Asset. Changing one will affect the other. Click the Duplicate this asset icon in the upper right (Figure 4-2.19).

Figure 4-2.19 Duplicating an asset
Finally, when the Appearance Asset has been duplicated (Figure 4-2.20), you can expand the information section and rename the asset. You can now make changes to this material without affecting other materials. This applies to all assets in a Material.

Figure 4-2.20 Renaming an asset

Related Revit Idea submission:
It would be helpful if Revit offered multiple 'Duplicate' options, similar to the options presented when duplicating a view via a right-click in the Project Browser. For example, Duplicate Material and Appearance Asset. Check out this Revit Idea here: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/duplicate-material-and-assets/idi-p/6721594.