2010

You can also apply materials to items by selecting the items in the Autodesk Navisworks Selection Tree or Scene
Area and then right-clicking the material in the palette and clicking Apply to Selected Items on the shortcut
menu.
Rules can also be used to apply materials to items automatically based on their layer or color or selection set
names, for example. See “
Use Presenter Rules” on page 329 for more information on this.
You can remove materials assigned to geometry items either from the Presenter window, or directly in the Scene
Area or Selection Tree.
Inheritance
Layers can have colors, just as geometry can. If a layer has a material, all its children in the Selection Tree inherit
this material, until one of the children is assigned its own material, at which point, all its children in the Selection
Tree inherit this material, and so on.
If you drag-and-drop materials onto layers, this works fine because only the layer picks up the material and
although its children inherit the material, they do not have it explicitly assigned to them.
Therefore, right-clicking such a child will not allow you to remove the material because one was not explicitly
assigned in the first place.
However, if you use a rule to assign a material to a certain color, then all objects in the scene will get this material
explicitly assigned to them, including parent layers and child objects. If, with a selection resolution of something
like Geometry (which is more specific than a resolution of Layer), you right-click a child object and click Remove
Materials on the shortcut menu, then the material will be removed from the child object, but not from the parent
layer and there won't be any apparent difference.
To remove the material, you will, therefore, have to remove it from the parent object; in the above situation this
would be the layer.
To apply materials to model geometry
1 Select the geometry items directly in the Scene Area, or in the Selection Tree.
2 Open the Presenter window, and click the Materials tab.
3 Choose your material from an archive or palette, right-click this material and click the Apply to Selected
Items option on the shortcut menu to assign the material to the current geometry selection.
NOTE Selected material will only be applied to the selected geometry item and not to every instance of the item,
if, for example, it is a multiply instanced block or cell. To assign the material to all instances of a multiply instanced
block or cell in the scene, you need to click the Apply to All Instances of Selection option on the shortcut menu.
TIP You can simply drag-and-drop a material from an archive or palette onto items in the Selection Tree or Scene Area
to assign those materials to the items. The selection resolution determines which items will receive the materials.
To use Scene Area or Selection Tree to remove materials from model geometry
1 Right-click the item in the Scene Area, or in the Selection Tree.
2 Click Presenter ➤ Remove Material on the shortcut menu.
NOTE This item on the menu will only be available if the right-clicked item has any material assigned to it at that
selection resolution in the Selection Tree.
To use the Presenter window to remove materials from model geometry
1 Open the Presenter window, and click the Materials tab.
2 In the material palette, right-click the material that you want to remove from items in the scene.
3 Click Remove From All Items on the shortcut menu to remove all assignments of the material from all
geometry items.
304 | Chapter 14 Create Photorealistic Visualizations