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For example, a door that is assigned the “Hinged – Single – Full Lite” style is
made up of five components in AutoCAD Architecture: the Frame, Panel, Stop,
Glass, and Muntins. Each component has a material assigned to it. For instance,
the default material assigned to the Panel component of this type of door is
“finish carpentry.wood.mahogany.” To change the Panel material in 3ds Max,
you can select the Panel component and drag a new material to it from the
Material Editor.
Because the Panel material is part of the door's style, your new material
automatically propagates to any other door in the scene that is assigned the
“Hinged – Single – Full Lite” style.
NOTE If you need to apply a material to individual objects, or object selections,
rather than to all objects of the same style, you can use the command
Propagate
Materials To Instances
on page 5232 .
For more information about working with materials and assigning materials
to objects in 3ds Max, see Materials on page 5163 .
Styles and Interactive Selection and Navigation
Architectural drawings range from simple sketches to highly complex floor
plans, so finding different components of a drawing can be difficult. Style-based
objects from AutoCAD Architecture all have styles associated with them. So
if you link a drawing to 3ds Max, objects with styles will be associated with
them both in AutoCAD Architecture and in 3ds Max. Furthermore, in 3ds
Max, the name of the object will contain the AutoCAD Architecture object
category name (Door, for example), style name (Double Hinged) and
component name (Panel).
You make most object and component selections in 3ds Max by selecting
objects in the viewports. However, in complex models where objects and
components may be spread across multiple layers or located in congested
areas, style definitions help streamline the selection of reusable components
in a drawing.
Once objects and components are selected, you can also isolate them from
the remainder of the model to work on them more efficiently.
To select objects by style:
The Select Similar command has the same function in 3ds Max as it does in
AutoCAD Architecture.
1 In a scene imported or linked from AutoCAD Architecture, select an object
that contains the style of interest.
6852 | Chapter 21 Managing Scenes and Projects