How can I stop Local copies of materials??.....

Re: How can I stop Local copies of materials??.....

Marc Thomas — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:51:48 GMT

Thanks Matt, it's ggod to know this kind of thing.

Regards

Marc

Re: How can I stop Local copies of materials??.....

Matt Gooding — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:01:41 GMT

Marc,

Nothing will break if you have MS_DEFAULT_TO_EXTERNAL_MATERIALS set and work in an area that requires internal materials... areas that require internal materials will all create them on the fly, giving you a mixed palette.

Here's the features I'm aware of that will create internal materials:

1) Material overrides specified in the Level Manager.

2) Materials from OBJ/SKP/3DS files that are imported into a model.

3) Captured GE terrain.

Thanks,

Matt

Re: How can I stop Local copies of materials??.....

Marc Thomas — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 14:29:09 GMT

Hi Matt,

This is very useful clarification. Can you tell us what "portions of MicroStation are designed to only work with internal materials" just in case we might break something with networked configs?

Thanks

Marc

Re: How can I stop Local copies of materials??.....

Matt Gooding — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:00:19 GMT

Setting MS_DEFAULT_TO_EXTERNAL_MATERIALS should be sufficient. This should override all instances of using internal materials where possible (some portions of MicroStation are designed to only work with internal materials).

MS_LOCAL_MATERIALS is the older setting... it has the effect of determining whether or not internal materials are used if MicroStation would otherwise use external materials. MS_DEFAULT_TO_EXTERNAL_MATERIALS was added so as to not change the behavior of the existing variable.

Thanks,

Matt

Re: How can I stop Local copies of materials??.....

Jan Dvorak — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:39:24 GMT

Hello there,

In my Standards.cfg, I currently have:

MS_LOCAL_MATERIALS=0

Questions:

- should I have both there, eg. MS_LOCAL_MATERIALS=0 and MS_DEFAULT_TO_EXTERNAL_MATERIALS=1?

- our should I delete MS_LOCAL_MATERIALS=0 and have only MS_DEFAULT_TO_EXTERNAL_MATERIALS=1?

- in other words: should I prefer one over the other, or it doesn't matter?

- why are there those 2 variables (to me they seem to do a similar thing) - legacy?

Thanks for clarifying!

Jan

Re: How can I stop Local copies of materials??.....

Jerry Flynn — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 01:08:10 GMT

Hi Steve,

You should add environment variable MS_DEFAULT_TO_EXTERNAL_MATERIALS and set it to 1.

I think that you really want to have all your external materials pointing to the same palette and just change the definition of the material.

Cheers,

Re: How can I stop Local copies of materials??.....

Stephen Luxford — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:47:49 GMT

.......I think I've answered my own question - I 'Thought' i was using an external table but I wasn't - on import external table it was copying the materials locally. I think I am now working in the old fashioned way with each model using the same single external table.