Apply materials

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in this video,

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you'll learn how to apply materials to system and laudable families in a project.

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You'll also see how to open a family in the family editor

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in order to get a better understanding of how material parameters are being used.

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System families are defined within a rabbit project.

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So the process of applying a material is pretty uniform

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for compound elements

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such as walls, floors, roofs and ceilings.

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There is an edit assembly dialogue where you can control all of the layers that

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make up that compound element type and that's where you can apply the materials.

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For example,

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I'll select a wall

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and then click at a type to open the Type properties dialog.

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Then next to structure.

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I'll click edit

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to open the edit assembly dialogue.

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And here is where you can control all of

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those layers and one of the columns here is material

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and so each of these layers has a material

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and that's where you can control the material,

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click in the field and then click the more button to open the material browser.

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And here you can simply browse through the list

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and select the material or you can search for a new material.

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And also,

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once you have selected a material you can

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adjust any of the material properties here,

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for example, on the graphics tab,

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which controls how the material appears in shaded views.

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Let's say I wanted to make this a little bit darker.

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So I can click the color swatch here and adjust the color.

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It's gonna make a slight adjustment here to make it a little darker.

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And then I'll click OK.

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And then I'll click OK to close

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each of the dialogues

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Now we can see that our bricks a little bit darker.

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So that's how we can apply materials to system families.

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As far as low double families.

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The process is going to be slightly different because low double families

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are created by users and depending on how that family was created,

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the material properties may be used slightly different.

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For example, I'll select a door

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and when I select the door I can look

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in the properties palette to see any instance parameters.

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So the materials could be instance parameters or they could be type parameters

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for example here I see a frame material and a finish.

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Those are two properties here under materials and finishes.

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But when I click in those fields there simply

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text base. I can just enter whatever I wanted for material parameters.

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I need to see that more button which will open the material browser.

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So I can go to the type properties dialog by clicking edit type

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and then see if there are any material parameters here which there are.

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There's a door material and a frame material And when I click in those

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fields I see that more button and that will open the material browser.

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So my point there is that you need to be able to open the material

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browser to actually control the material that's different

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than just simply entering a text based value

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which could still be used in a schedule but

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it's not going to control the actual material.

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I'm gonna click cancel to close these dialogues

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and then I'm going to click edit family with that door still selected

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to open the door family in the family editor.

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And I'll orbit around a bit here and we can start to look at the geometry

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that makes up this door family.

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For example when I select the

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frame here

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I can then look in the properties palette at the material.

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Any geometry that you create is going to have a material parameter

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and then in order to be able to control it in the project,

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you need to associate it to a family parameter.

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And if you're working on if you're if

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you're using a family that's already been created,

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you can open it up and then look for this material parameter and

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then click the button to the far right that says associate family parameter

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and that will open the associate family parameter dialog and then you can

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see the actual family parameter that is

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controlling the material for that geometry.

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So in this case we can see that the frame geometry that

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I had selected here is being controlled by the frame material parameter.

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So I can click Okay.

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And then we can select the the door panel geometry here and then once again click the

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associate family parameter button and we can see that

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it is assigned to the door material parameter.

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And then I'll click. Ok? So if we go back to the project and select that door again

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and click edit type,

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we can see those two parameters here in the type properties dialog,

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and that's how we can apply a material to them.

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And then that material will then control the

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material of that specific piece of geometry.

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So if you get a family from maybe a manufacturer or somebody created it

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in your office and you're really not sure that's what you can do.

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You can open up that family in the family

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editor and take a look at that material parameter

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to know how it's going to work in the project.