2008

Materials and Linked AutoCAD Architecture
Objects
Materials in 3ds Max are vital to making your visualizations compelling and
realistic. The native material attributes that 3ds Max relies on are those that
tell it how to render the surface of an object given certain lighting conditions.
Those material properties that are so central to architectural visualization (that
convey surface coloring, surface texture, transparency, and so forth) are only
one of many sets of properties covered in an AutoCAD Architecture (formerly
Architectural Desktop or ADT) material definition. To make your work more
efficient, the rendering material properties stored and assigned in AutoCAD
Architecture are designed to flow transparently to 3ds Max through the
File
Link Manager
on page 6783 .
See also:
Propagate Materials to Instances on page 5232
Assigning Materials to Linked AutoCAD
Architecture Objects
Material assignments exhibit special behavior on linked AutoCAD Architecture
objects and blocks, and the behavior is controlled by the
Propagate Materials
To Instances toggle
on page 5232 .
In the default state, assigning a material to any component of any linked
AutoCAD Architecture object or block is equivalent to assigning the same
material to every instance of that component of that object or block
throughout your scene.
As an example, let's say you have multiple instances of a block named
Telephone in your AutoCAD Architecture drawing, which consists of two
nested blocks named Handset and Base. If you assign a material to one Handset
anywhere in your scene, all the Handsets in all the Telephones throughout
the scene will receive that material.
If you want to keep materials from propagating between instances in your
scene, turn off the
Propagate Materials To Instances toggle on page 5232 .
File Link | 6825