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■ An item in the Selection Tree
■ A selection or search set
If you drag the material from an archive, it will appear in the palette where it can be edited and saved with the
scene, if necessary.
Presenter uses Autodesk Navisworks selection resolution to decide which items to apply the material to when
dragging from an archive or palette into the main view. When hovering over any item in the main view, the
proposed selection will change into the selection color (blue by default). When you drop the material onto the
current selection, it will be applied to all the items selected. If you drop the material onto an item that is not
currently selected, it will be applied to just that item. See “
Set Selection Resolution” on page 222 for more
information on selection resolution.
You can also apply materials to items by selecting the items in the Selection Tree or Scene View, right-clicking
the material in the palette, and clicking Apply to Selected Items.
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 378 for more information on this.
You can remove materials assigned to geometry items, either from the Presenter window, or directly in the Scene
View 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.
You can drag and drop materials onto layers. 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 View or in the Selection Tree.
2 Open the Presenter window, and click the Materials tab.
3 Select your material from an archive or palette, right-click this material, and click Apply to Selected Items
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.
To assign the material to all instances of the selected geometry in the scene, click Apply to All Instances of Selection
on the shortcut menu.
TIP You can drag and drop a material from an archive or palette onto items in the Selection Tree or Scene View to
assign those materials to the items. The selection resolution determines which items will receive the materials.
To use Scene View or the Selection Tree to remove materials from model geometry
■ Right-click the item in the Scene View, or in the Selection Tree, and click Presenter ➤ Remove Material on
the shortcut menu.
354 | Chapter 14 Create Photorealistic Visualizations