Can you help? Duplicated materials instead of shared

Rendering Flamingo
1

Before the last Rhino update, when importing blocks that share a material, Rhino would ask whether to duplicate or share the material.
We always selected to share as this keeps the materials list short and navigable.

Recently however, this prompt has disappeared and all imported blocks that share a material create a new duplicate material leading very quickly to a very long list of identical materials.

Is there a way to reset this or at least ensure the prompt pops up again during block file import?

2

There doesnā€™t seem to be any setting for this in either the Rhino or Flamingo or Block managerā€¦

3

@JohnM, can you help?

4

I am having this same issue and itā€™s very frustrating. Using Octane Render for Rhino. Just updated a few days ago to the latest Rhino release. Every time I copy and paste an object rhino duplicates every used material in the tree with the [imported] suffix added. When I updated I got a dialogue box that asked if I wanted to create new materials for imported objects. I clicked yes but now its doing this for every copy and paste inside the file. Cant find any menu to undo it.

1 Like
5

@A111 The dialog box you are referring to was so hated by most users that we removed it in favor of simply copying the materials with an [imported] post-fix on the name. We now understand that there are some users who found the dialog useful. Iā€™m going to add a new option this week so that you can choose what you want to happen. Instead of an annoying dialog box, there will simply be a set-and-forget global option which you can set if you donā€™t like the default of copying.

@james4 Your issue is a regression bug which was accidentally introduced into Rhino just before 6.16 was released. It will be fixed in 6.18. Apologies for this, it was my mistake but I didnā€™t catch it in time. May I ask the exact version you are currently running? You can find it in Help/About Rhinoceros. Thanks.

The fix for both of these issues should be in 6.18.

John

6

Hi @johnc, so will this set-and-forget option then enable the sharing of materials with the same name again I presume if set in such a way.
I can see how this dialogue could become frustrating. I think we had it pop up once upon importing a block but could then tick a ā€˜do this for all similar conflictsā€™ option which worked well.

Many thanks for looking at this and providing a fix, looking forward to making use of it. Working remotely at present so unable to confirm version number however it is set to auto update so will be on the most recent release available in the UK.

8

It seems I was confused about the version number. Iā€™ll go back and edit my posts to correct them.

9

Hi @A111. The option will be a choice of these.

If during import, insert etc, an imported material has the same name as an existing one:

  1. Discard the incoming material that is conflicting, or
  2. Import the conflicting material with an [imported] tag on the end of the name.

I think option 1 is what you mean by ā€œsharingā€. In which case, yes you will be able to choose to share or not.

John

10

RH-54021 is fixed in the latest Service Release Candidate

11

Some changes have been made regarding the above options. Originally, the options were a toggle in a command called RenderImportRenameConflicting. This command has been removed and:

  • RenderImportConflictOption has been added to control conflict resolution when importing.
  • RenderPasteConflictOption has been added to control conflict resolution when pasting.

The above commands are test commands and will not auto-complete. They were added for advanced users who need complete control over what happens when there are render content conflicts during import or paste operations. These commands even make it possible to bring back the dialog that many users hated, because there are some users who find it useful.

These changes will appear in the next service release of Rhino 6.

John