Materials in the linked file are lost, Tweet

[jimho]

My scene is a bird eye view, there are around 20 building blocks, each of them is a linked revit file (unitX.rvt) . in each linked revit there are around 10 materials which need to be shown in the bird eye view(container.rvt). the problem is quite a number of the materials are lost in the big view (container.rvt) , especially glasses or mullion etc material. only a few of the materials are still there and some of them, the name of the material are changed,
I donnot want to bind the links, because for the individual building, there is still need to be further developed in the later stage...

Any suggestions?
Jim

[face_off]

I have not seen this issue previously. Have you got Load Linked Files ticked in the Configuration? Have you tried linking 2 very simple .rvt files to see if that also exhibits the problem?

Paul

[jimho]

hey Paul,
Please find the attached revit files,
at least two materials named 0_glass, 0_greywall from the link1.rvt are lost, guess there is conflict then they are not loaded into the container,
the issue is the more linked file, the more material is lost: e.g. when the 1st linked rvt loaded there is 6 materials loaded ( from the link), after a few more other link files loaded, there will be only 3 from the first file are kept, means more are lost later. Hope this description may helps to find out the issue.

container.zip

(8.24 MiB) Downloaded 310 times

Best regards,
Jim

[jimho]

in addition,
quite confused to me, materials remained may differ for different time I open the container file,
if close the revit session completely then re-open, there maybe more materials left.
guess there must be something in the memory which conflicts....
Just FYR

Best regards,
Jim

[face_off]

Hi Jim

Thanks for providing those files.

I have had a good look into the issue. In summary, as the plugin is loading the geometry into Octane, Revit provides a material Element Id for each polygon. The plugin then retrieves the material definition (including name) for that Element Id. The plugin first tries to load a material from the container file with that Element Id. If none is found, it searches all linked documents. 0_Greywall has an Element Id of 20362, however the container file has a ParameterElement with the same number, so the material is not loaded. This is can attempt to fix (tell me which version of Revit you are using and I will upload a test version of the plugin). However if you have multiple linked files, each with the same materials, the plugin is not going to know which of the material definitions to use when loading that material. So I think it will get confused. So I am not sure a simple solution exists for you problem, and you may be better off merging the file for rendering purposes (I understand you are trying to avoid this).

Paul

[jimho]

Dear Paul,
Thanks for your respond,
Using link is a key issue of work flow for design team which will enable different type of work moving on parallely and be updated in the real time,
this is essential for design firms to organize the their teams, so live links are important.

if each time when rendering people need to bind the links into the container file, things become complicated and not reliable. Binding in revit may make mistakes and elements might be lost (this happens 8 times out 10 if the model complicated enough) if each time when people update their design they need to bind, for big project, the complication may be much more difficult then rendering itself...

when a material's element id is conflict with an existing one, is it possible to create a new element id just view them as a different material , let user to assign them specific materials later , even though they are in the same name they might be different when they are in the container.

My observation: in the current solution materials from the links and native materials in the "container" are in groups i.e.
group 0 are native materials for the native elements for the container,
group 1 for link1,
group 2 for link2;
etc
guess there is situation like this: material A in link 1 which is also existing in the link2, since each time it may differ that the links loading into the container, so A may appears in link 1 group or link 2 group but randomly, in the users eyes this becomes mythical, we can only see material lost.
To resovle this,
Option 1,as above mentioned just view them as different material and create new element id, means in both group for link 1 and link2 there is a material A.
Option 2, only keep 2 group of materials: group 1, is the original group0 for native element, leave as it is; group 2. the new group for all the links, means what ever link 1, link 2, link3, they all go to the new group, means which click which ever link all materials from links are all listed there,so there will not be materials which is actually loaded (might from other link),and existing in the container already but not able to be found by users.

I personally prefer the ooption 1...
I am designer but not a programmer, and my English is pretty limited especially for this kind of description, hope I had made every thing clear enough, my ideas are only for your reference, I believe you will resolve the issue in a much more sophisticated way.

Best regards,
Jim

[jimho]

which version of Revit you are using

I am using Revit 2019

Thanks a lot

Jim

[jimho]

The plugin first tries to load a material from the container file with that Element Id. If none is found, it searches all linked documents. 0_Greywall has an Element Id of 20362, however the container file has a ParameterElement with the same number,

Means all the lost material are actually exist in the container, but might in the different name and under or after other link' name(or the ainner's native) can we just show the name under the links name, eg.
for link 1 there is a material A not loaded when the Link1 loaded into the container.
senario 1， since there is a material A0 which is from the container, has same element ID in the containner, is it possible to show material A0 in the link1's material list, when click link1,(eg. in a format like "A0(A from Link1)"), to let user understand the material is there
senario 2，since there is a material A1 has the same element ID in the containner(which is loaded by linkX into container before link1 ) , is it possible to show material A1 in the link1's material list,

but in both cases materials are kind of connected or say syncronized over different files, yet somethimes this may not what we really want. glass for different building do not need to be the same.
so still, is it possible just import the materials form link directly, no need to do the search completely, to let user to determin the appearance for all the materials.

Jim

[jimho]

apologize there is quite some typo, but seems there is no means for editing.....

[face_off]

Hi Jim

The plugin was not specifically designed for the workflow you are using, so you may have some challenges using it this way.

However, the following version should improve your situation. It will now load a linked file material if there is another element with the same Id in the container. However you might have 2 linked files, with two different materials having the same Element Id, so this may not be perfect. You could probably get around this by having all your Revit material pre-defined in the startup .rvt file which each team uses. Then the material Id will all match. Another idea would be to have group 1 use "1_MyMaterialName" and group 2 to use "2_MyMaterialName", then the materials will likely be unique.

https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloads/plugins/a1/65/0c/de/OctaneRender_for_Revit_2019_3_08_3_54_Win64.exe

Paul