OTOY Forums

Hi,
I am using Octane for Revit 3.7.0.51 and Revit 2018.2 update.
I am experiencing weird material selection issue.
When I select a pipe in Revit, Octane does not detect whether the pipe selected and so shows no material for it, as the following pic shows :



However when I select same pipe in Octane Viewport, octane detects the pipe and shows which material it has, as the following pic shows :



Finally Octane never detects any other pipes which have identical properties with the pipe I selected, neither selected via Octane nor Revit, as the following pic shows:



These pipes are geometries in Revit as well as those faucets.I have no problems with those faucets, ducts, valves etc. This problem occurs only with the pipes.
I tried to change the material property of the pipe in Revit but nothing changed.
Ant idea about the issue?

Hi - would you be able to provide that scene pls, and I will take a closer look.

Thanks

Paul

Revit file is in the attachment. (zipped)
Thanks in advance.

Thanks for providing that scene.

When you select an item in the Revit viewport, the plugin detects the selected item, and then queries the materials belonging to that item to add to the "Selection Materials" combo box. In the case of Revit Pipes, the Revit API is reporting that the Pipe element dos not have any materials - and therefore the "Selection Materials" combo box is empty.

When you render in the Octane Viewport, the plugin uses the new(ish) Revit SDK IExportContext class to extract the low-level geometry for the scene to load into Octane. The IExportContext class /is/ providing a material for some of the Pipe elements ("Material 1", "Material 2", and "Copper pipe"), so the plugin is able to material pick these materials.

So in summary, the Octane Viewport has a more detailed representation of the Revit scene than the plugin has available to it when you simply select a Revit element.

I suspect the Revit API /not/ returning the Material for Pipe elements is a Revit bug - and might be a result of the merging of Revit with Revit MEP.

I don't think there is a lot I can do able this issue - it would be more up to Autodesk to address the above bug. And the workaround (material picking in the Octane Viewport) works OK. The situation where the Pipes connected to the taps not material picking is a result of there not actually being a material assigned to those Pipes.

I hope that help explain the situation.

Paul

Ok I see.
So what I got from your explanation that System Families in Revit CAN NOT be modified this is an issue with Autodesk itself.
However I wonder if there's a way for octane to read pipe material not from "Materials and Finishes tab" but from "Material" tab embedded in "Mechanical properties" tab, which is shown in the following picture;



When I click a geometry in Revit scene with "Materials and Finishes" tab predefined, there's no problem in Octane because it has the right property which Octane seeks.



But somehow as you mentioned in your last post, octane recognizes the material using "new(ish) Revit SDK IExportContext class " which I have no idea what it is for
Any chance to also define it for the materials embedded in "Mechanical properties" tab I mean?

Thanks.

P.S.: The material property section listed under "MECHANICAL TAB" actually inherits its value from "Pipe Segment" property which is "Steel Pipe Fe-35" in this situation as shown in the picture.Since pipe types are SYSTEM FAMILIES in Revit and can not be EDITED, user should change its PIPE SEGMENT property to assign new material for the pipe.

I would need to spend more time on this to tell for sure, so I will need to defer this until after I get all the 3.08 plugin releases out.

Paul