Problems with fur materials

RPC tools in Microstation CE 15 are still loaded with all kind of bugs so I have tried to use materials with fur feature for shrub & ground cover plantings. Basically they work ok but I wonder is there something wrong in my workspace configuration or what because I have to re-edit the fur materials every singe time I use my 3D-vegetation material palette. My materials will always loose link to the fur material and shrubs will be rendered as blank billboards until I re-link the fur materials in the 'fur'-tab of the material editor. I have created and stored materials for fur billboards in the same material palette and attached them to my shrub planting materials using fur/ tree billboarding.

Furthermore, the logic behind the way  the material palettes are managaged makes absolutely no sense to me. If I adjust some material settings and try to update the material palette after that, only some of the changes will be saved and some will not. This behaviour feels very unlogical. I save local materials which I have edited to the library and then save the palette to a shared server folder where our MS CE workspace and onrganization libraries are located. Next time I open the updated material palette I will notice that specular value of the material stays unchanged but some other values have been updated. Why? Is this related to the custom workspace configuration somehow? Will the material palettes work better it they were stored to local c:\ folder?

  • Hi,

    All the material settings are stored in the same definition data chunk, so they cant be split, as to why this is not working as expected I would need to look into this further. If the fur material is stored in the same palette in the same dgn file it should have no problem finding it, there could be an issue copying the fur material on use into the active file when the main material using the fur is copied in when used, which would need to be investigated.

    Regards

    Paul