Hello. I am finding that I have some old models going back 15+ years which I have to update in Rh8, These models have hundreds of layers and many more objects.
In the Rh8 Materials Listing, there are materials there that I cannot find what they are assigned to, but Rhino says that I cannot delete them because they are in use, somewhere..?
Some of these are even very old Brazil renderer materials.
All I want to do is change whatever objects are assigned to those materials to one of my new PBR Rh8 materials sothat I can remove these old materials from the file.
Purge tool does not remove them.
Is there some way to select a material and move all of its assignments over to a newer material of choice?
Using the Select objects option on the Materials menu only works if the assigned object is visible, but if it is on a layout or hidden, or an off layer then this does nothing at all.
Regards. MichaelVS
Hi @mvyess ,
Can you change the Type drop down for the material to say Physically Based. I am guessing some of these say Placeholder now as the type. Barring the ‘select objects’ workflow where you then assign something else, I think that’s your best bet.
Hi. Using the REPLACE option I see lets me convert old materials to be PBR materials. or I can assign the material and its dependencies to and imported external Rhino material, but then I just end up with duplicates of the materials I already have.
It would be great if there was an option on the REPLACE popup to assign all of the assets of that material to a material that is already in my material library without ending up with multiple duplicates.
ie. So in the end a single material change can affect all instances.
I think adding this option to the replace popup would benefit most users since then instead of the pain of trying to find all the assigned objects of a material just to change them to another material, a simple re-assignment could instantly change that material for all instances on all objects in the model, even on layers etc. that are not currently visible. Regards. MIchael VS
A potential workaround to get rid of the old materials may be the save small/save geometry only tick boxes when saving, which would purge all material data. Agree a replace material option like you describe would be useful.
Thank You, yes that is one way to modernize the ‘old’ material, but still means that remains just another material that I cannot delete and cannot re-assign. Thank you though.
I did try using the EDIT→LAYERS→ALL LAYERS ON option,
followed by SHOW ALL (Which was a visual mess),
but then using the SelMaterialName command I could mass select objects that were still assigned to some of the old materials, and then using the Materials TAB - Right Click - Assign to Objects option, I could re-assign those to my new materials.
This involved some layer cleanup / disabling afterwards, but I managed to then be able to remove about half the old materials in the model file.
This shouldn’t have to be so convoluted though, so I think being able the use the existing REPLACE material option, but with the option to select an existing library material would be beneficial to all. Regards. Michael VS