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464 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects
Family Elements
When modifiers and materials are assigned to
family elements that are imported or linked to
3ds Max, they propagate throughout all instances
of the element if their family a nd typ e match
exactly. For instance, one particular part of your
model shows a room with three doors. Two of the
doors are
Doors <Single-Flush : 32” x 80”> and
the third is a
Doors <Single-Flush : 36” x 80”> .If
you change the panel material of one of the
Doors
<Single-Flush : 32” x 80”>
doors, the panel of the
other
Doors <Single-Flush : 32” x 80”> door will
also change because their family,
Doors ,andtype,
Single-Flush : 32” x 80” ,areidentical.
Propagation of materials can be controlled by
toggling the
Auto Material Propagation Toggle
(page 2–1276)
.
Blocks
The concept of blocks originated in AutoCAD.
Blocks allow you to combine one or more objects
into a sing le reusable object. Blocks can be
repeatedly inserted in the drawing at various
locations, orientations, and scales. Changes made
to a block propagate automatically to all instances
of that block throughout the drawing. Like
all drawing construction, inserting or deleting
blocks occurs while you work in AutoCAD or
Architectural Desktop.
You then link the DWG file to 3ds Max, where
yo ur goal is to beautify the scene in preparation
for rendering. Some of those preparations include
such procedures as selecting a block instance
so you can apply or adjust a material, applying
texture mapping coordinates, unifying or flipping
normals, and setting rendering properties. These
procedures affect all other block instances in the
scene.
The structure of
nested blocks ,blocksthatare
made from multiple sub-blocks, is maintained
when you link an AutoCAD draw ing to 3ds Max.
For example, if the block
Desk1 is made using
several blocks,
Desk , Chair and Return ,youwill
be able to select any of
Desk1 ’s sub-blocks to
alter their rendering properties or materials. You
can only access rendering properties for block
components that appear as Linked Geometry on
theModifierpanel. Blocksorsub-blocks,that
appear as VIZBlocks in the Modify panel, do not
have rendering properties because they are not
renderable.
Note: AchangetothedrawinginAutoCAD
isreflectedin3dsMaxwhenyoureloadthe
linked model. Changes made in 3ds Max do not
propagate back to AutoCAD .
Block and Modifying Linked Geometry
Linked objects show up as linked geometry objects
in the modifier stack. These objects don’t allow
access to sub-object levels where minor editing
can occur at Vertex or Face levels. You must first
add an Edit Mesh modifier to the object in order
to access sub-object levels w here you can p erform
operations like welding vertices or deleting faces.
If you add a modifier to a block, the modifier is
applied to all instances of that block. Likewise, any
sub-object level editing to the originally selected
block propagates to all other instances.
Note: Any modifiers you apply to a block or block
component in 3ds Max are preserved if you reload
thefilewiththe
File Link Manager (page 3–431) .
If you move, rotate, or scale blocks or block
components in 3ds Max, their new transform is
preserved even if the linked model is reloaded
from AutoCAD. Transforms applied to linked
geometry in 3ds Max are relative to the transforms
applied to the same objects in AutoCAD. Further,
the transform propagates to all instances of that
block or component. For example, if you move the