Forums >> Revit Building >> Technical Support >> Replacing a material with a newer updated version

cobblea

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Joined: Wed, Feb 6, 2008
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(Revit Architecture 2010)

I am working on updating materials and all of their associated properties (some of them shared parameters).  The project I am working on has probably 20 or 30 materials that are named random things, and not all of them are necessarily in use.  For example, there is one material called "aluminum" and another one called "Aluminum".  There are several similar situations with other matierials, and it would take a long time to sort out which materials are in use, so instead of figuring that out, I was planning to replace materials completely with new ones that I developed in a separate project.  In my mind, it would be a similar opperation as updating a family with a newer better copy;  say Select all instances, then change the family & type to the newer version, and then purge the project of the older family. 

Since materials don't really allow you to select all instances and replace them all at once, I am interested in anyone's ideas about how to best handle this type of situation.  I realize I may have painted myself into a corner on this attempt, but I would be interested in knowing how others have managed their materials successfully.

Once the materials are corrected, our finish plans and interior elevations that will work much smoother and coordinate themselves nicely and report their properties on our Material Schedule.  I am planning on purging the old materials after I get this working.

Thank you in advance for any help or advice!

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cobblea

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Joined: Wed, Feb 6, 2008
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I still haven't found a clean way to change out one material completely for another.  Perhaps I should add a wishlist item for the ability to Combine Materials, similar to how you can combine phases with previous or next.  In my opinion, this would really help in the management of materials (and takeoffs, schedules, etc).  If this tool were developed you could  simplify and clean up a project that had several similar materials that may have accumulated as families were added ("Aluminum" & "aluminum" for example).  Say you wanted to have all objects use the "Aluminum" material, and remove the "aluminum" material, you could go into the material settings and select both materials, and then click a magical Combine button. A prompt could then allow you to select which material would remain after the operation.  This function would then take all objects in the model that use the material "aluminum" (regardless of category, phase, etc), and reassign those definitions to be "Aluminum".

Does that make sense?  Does anyone else think this would be useful? If anyone knows of a way to do this within revit 2010, please let me know.

Thanks!

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cercas

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Joined: Tue, Oct 17, 2006
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Try using a Multi-Category Material Takeoff,  for sorting the materials that are in use.... And importing them from another project, alow them to be overwritten, theu just need to have the same name...

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Joao Cercas 

On Revit 2010 (SP3)

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bhumphrey

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Joined: Tue, Nov 30, 2010
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Did anybody ever figure out a solution to this?

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