Assign material to entire level with RGB colored elements

Maybe use selection ( lock Level, select all elements on this level and assing materials to selected elements ) ?

Hi Martinezx,

Then I would have to assign materials every time I reloaded a reference to be sure that all objects had the proper material assigned.

I was hoping there would be a way to assign a material to a range of RGB colors, or maybe to the entire level regardless of color assignment to the objects.

Just like I can do something like "Default:0-255", to assign to all the system colors on a level, I would like to assign to all RGB colors.

Unfortunately I have to agree to Torben, I did some tests with the .459 version to assign materials. The behaviour of the Input boxes and dialogs is not descriptable. I was sometimes able to assign a level (for all colors) to a material, but whenever I try to make an additional assignment, everything is gone.

I would normally not go this way ! I tried to assign the material to the level in levelmanager and this one works (at least for me) as expected, but the assignements in material editor do even not work for me.

i do use the layered approach.  i was just anticipating a future situation with loads of externally changing rgb elements.

and thank you very very much Michael for verifying!

Interesting, Michael, I had a similar problem a while back but thought the issue was due to the fact that I was trying to use external MAT and PALs, that did not seem to stick. Maybe Torben has, indeed, uncovered a bug.

Torben, I hope you were not offended, as I meant no offence. Just that the Editor example you gave at the beginning of the thread seemed to show the type of modelling behaviour I have seen, too often, in Sketchup models.

Regardless, both "Default : *" and "Default" (as manual edits in the Material Manager) worked, in the past. If they do not, now, then something is, indeed, broken.

Am not in Windows now, so I can't test it, but you should be able to right click on a material, choose New Assignment (or whatever the exact wording might be) and manually write in just the level name/s you want assigned to it. Again, if that does not stick, it is either broken, or Bentley has changed the behaviour and not documented it.

Ciao

Couldn't help myself. Rebooted into Windows and went into a model that has only one level, called Existing.

I opened the Material Editor, created a new Palette and a new material, within it.

I then right clicked on the material, chose New Assignment and entered Existing in the pop up field that comes up for Level:Color

The view was set to smooth and the material assignment immediately showed up in the view.

If you right click on the material and choose Edit Assignments, the Material Assignments window does show it assigned to Existing:0-255

Restarted the drawing, to be sure, and the assignment still sticks.

Started the drawing on a different machine, and the material still sticks.

So, I then changed the colour of the Existing level to be an RGB colour and that is when the weird stuff starts.

Before exiting the DGN, I had not saved settings, so I had to change the acceleration of the view back to Smooth/Modelling, to see whether the material was sticking. It seemed to, but I was now seeing transparent, rather than smooth. Tried changing it a few times but still showed transparent.

Then I tried to render and Luxology crashed out on me. I restarted the drawing and tried to render, again, still with no luck. Luxology seems to freeze, on a scene that, earlier, had rendered in a few seconds.

My gut feeling is that if you assign to a specific RGB colour it might work, but if you have a catch all, like I initially set up (and has stuck) the engine gets in trouble. I can't help but think that it is that 0-255 argument...

I am going to force quit this session. The render window minimised when I pulled up the Material Editor, and I have not been able to get it to Restore, in the past 5 minutes or so.

Would be nice if someone else could repeat this simple test to see if Michael's suspicion that the behaviour is, actually, unpredictable is correct.

Cheers

In addition (without currently being able to test stonellis way), I had it cut down in my case, that whenever a second level is involved in a assignment that has the 0-255 color setting, the complete assignments are lost.

That is easy to reproduce, create an assignment with 'edit assignment' choose a level, and you will be in the '<levelname> : *' case (showing color 0-255 in edit dialog). When you thereafter try to create a second levelentry (via 'new assignment') or choose a second level (via STRG in 'edit assignment') the complete previous assignments are lost.

To our luck, the levelmanager way is working, and if a developer has a reproduceable testcase, he will surely find the reason, and mostly a way around. :-)

In addition (without currently being able to test stonellis way), I had it cut down in my case, that whenever a second level is involved in a assignment that has the 0-255 color setting, the complete assignments are lost.

That is easy to reproduce, create an assignment with 'edit assignment' choose a level, and you will be in the '<levelname> : *' case (showing color 0-255 in edit dialog). When you thereafter try to create a second levelentry (via 'new assignment') or choose a second level (via STRG in 'edit assignment') the complete previous assignments are lost.

To our luck, the levelmanager way is working, and if a developer has a reproduceable testcase, he will surely find the reason, and mostly a way around. :-)