Revit Materials in 3.1

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  • Is anyone else concerned that the mapping to custom materials in Revit goes to a local material folder? When others are going to access the project, they will get broken texture paths. The message in the material settings say that relocating textures can cause issues. This is causing us to not install 3.1... Why not have a relative path folder to the central model for project based shared materials? Still testing alternatives, but curious what anyone else is doing? Also curious about Enscape's response to this concern.

  • That "moving textures will cause issues" message might be a bit misleading. I think that is meant to recommend to not manually move textures inside that folder (or manually intervene inside that folder by modifying textures etc). But it can be remapped to a shared drive that everyone has access to, so that other users won't end up with broken paths.


    Depending on the number of users, that one shared folder might become GIANT, which might be a problem if you're syncing it over the web (like we're doing :) ). Time will tell.

  • So there really isn't a way to locate all of the jpgs automatically in one central folder? They all appear to go into custom named folders upon download (be0dd872fac54dea09.............). I was hoping for one central location like the 'archmat' folders that come with autodesk products. This would make it a lot easier to manage these materails.


    Is there a benefit of downloading these from the cloud each time? It seems fussy for both uses and BIM managers alike.


    Aaron

  • I was hoping for one central location like the 'archmat' folders that come with autodesk products.

    In the settings dialog (the gear icon in the lowerleft corner of the material library) you can remap the folder. It's just that inside that folder, Enscape will (automatically) arrange the textures for optimized loading. E.g. you shouldn't go in and restructure the subfolders or rename anything or the system might have problems.

  • Yes this change makes it really hard to have a single folder that holds all the project materials.


    We will now have 4 folders:

    - Autodesk standard folder

    - Enscape material library folder

    - Project folder for downloaded/created textures

    - Company wide folder for template materials


    It's getting pretty nasty.


    I've made a basic plugin that collects and zips all the textures used in a revit project. It also lists all textures. I might polish that up a bit and release if its helpful for people. This should aid in sharing/archiving the textures on a project. I was also thinking of adding a smart "relink" maps feature.

  • What would be nice is if the Enscape materials were relative pathed to the central file (and Revit wouldn't make you map to the current projects folder for materials... Possible API hack?). That would take care of the majority of the issues here.

  • Relative paths are problematic with Revit. Enscape could in theory do it, but Revit wouldn't find them, meaning missing paths in the material editor and missing textures in Revit's realistic view/native renderings.

  • I've made a basic plugin that collects and zips all the textures used in a revit project. It also lists all textures. I might polish that up a bit and release if its helpful for people. This should aid in sharing/archiving the textures on a project. I was also thinking of adding a smart "relink" maps feature.

    Pieter that would be wonderful if you can release such plugin.

    I have been searching for this for a long time.

  • As a smaller AEC firm with a pretty broad project portfolio, we have decided to make an investment in developing a "standard" library of Revit materials that are built-in to our Revit project template file.


    With the Enscape 3.1 Material Library, we are most likely going to just swap out the Appearance properties for our Revit materials with the Enscape materials that we like, and roll from there. In other words, the Enscape assets will come pre-loaded in our project template, with no need to go into the Enscape material library (unless you are adding a new material that is not already in the Revit material library).


    What I wish is that Enscape included an option to disable the Enscape Material Library and/or make the Enscape Assets available online on the enscape3d.com website so BIM managers can simply just download the appearance assets they want to use, avoiding the need entirely to try and manage *another* material library folder on the network.

  • Forgive me if this has been discussed elsewhere, I've searched and cannot find an answer beyond registry edits to suppress update warnings, etc.

    Is there a way to set a custom Imported Texture path and Offline Asset path when rolling out this install/update firmwide to ~700 users? Where do these custom settings get saved? I may have found a .JSON for the Offline Asset path I believe, but nothing so far for the custom Textures path.

    Thanks in advance.

  • This plugin sounds like it could make things a lot easier for those managing central libraries! have you put the plugin anywhere to download?

  • No at the moment it runs only on my machine (I need to still figure out how to make an isntaller). It also still need to add the ability to update the paths (you can now write the textures of your project to a specific folder, put it doesn't yet update your materials to point to that new path.


    It's a hobby project so I only work on it when I have time.


    If there are any experienced programmers out there with some Revit API experience that want to contribute, let me know :) Would love to collaborate on it.

  • Forgive me if this has been discussed elsewhere, I've searched and cannot find an answer beyond registry edits to suppress update warnings, etc.

    Is there a way to set a custom Imported Texture path and Offline Asset path when rolling out this install/update firmwide to ~700 users? Where do these custom settings get saved? I may have found a .JSON for the Offline Asset path I believe, but nothing so far for the custom Textures path.

    Thanks in advance.

    There is a json file in your Documents/Enscape/Settings folder that stores the locations. We installed the update, then copied the modified settings file to every uses machine during the deployment.


    Looks something like this: (tabs didn't come through in the copy and paste)

    {

    "Version": 2,

    "Settings": {

    "LastUsedAssetSource": {

    "Value": 1

    },

    "LocalAssetsDirectory": {

    "Value": "Z:\\Enscape\\CustomAsset_Library"

    },

    "OfflineAssetsDirectory": {

    "Value": "Z:\\Enscape\\Offline_Library"

    },

    "UseOfflineAssets": {

    "Value": true

    },

    "ShowOnScreenHelp": {

    "Value": false

    },

    "ImportedTexturesPath": {

    "Value": "Z:\\Enscape\\ImportedTextures"

    }

    }

    }