Michael’s Corner

Michael's Corner is a monthly publication written by Michael E. Beall, Autodesk Authorized Author and peripatetic AutoCAD trainer. Michael travels all over the USA, bringing his fantastic experience and great understanding of AutoCAD to his clients. Michael's Corner brings together many of the tips, tricks and methods developed during these training sessions for the benefit of all users.

Michael's Corner provides something for every AutoCAD user. Every month, a number of articles cover a wide range of topics, suitable for users at all levels, including "The Basics" for those just starting out. Essentially, the aim of Michael's Corner is to help all AutoCAD users work smarter and faster.

This month…

From the Vault

Originally published November 2011

Mapping Materials to Blocks in A2012 and Tweaking a Visual Style

There's a lot of powerful 3D stuff in AutoCAD by itself, and one of the really fun features is the ability to easily map materials to a block. A significant percentage of my customer base are designers in the contract furniture industry, and they are quite keen on materials and 3D.

Herman Miller has a vast amount of images that can be saved as .JPG files, which is what I did for this article. Here's the link with their Materials Library.

The golden key to mapping materials to a block, is to do so in the Block Editor. Once in the Block Editor, you can set the Visual Style to Realistic so you can see the result immediately.

After assigning materials to the block in the following exercise, you will create a new Visual Style and modify a couple of the variables. Click here to download the drawing of the Aeron stool that I will be using in this exercise. I will also have it on my website on the AutoCAD Stuff link. The following procedure is presented in AutoCAD 2012, but A2011 is very similar.

Note: Of course, the following procedures also apply to any 3D geometry that is not a block, so please feel free to bypass the opening of the Block Editor, and simply set an isometric view and begin on Step 3, below.

Prerequisite: Before beginning this exercise, if you want to apply materials from another resource other than AutoCAD's Materials Browser, download the desired .JPG/.GIF/.BMP/.TIF/.PCX, etc. first.

How to Map Materials to a Block

1. After opening the drawing containing a block to which you want to map materials, select the block, then right-clickBlock Editor.

2. In the Block Editor, set an isometric view using the View Cube or 3D Orbit.

3. On the View tab, set the Visual Style to Realistic.

4. Click Materials Browser found on the Palettes panel of the View tab.

   

5. If you are going to use a downloaded image file, at the top of the Materials Browser palette, click Create MaterialNew Generic Material, which opens the Materials Editor palette.

6. On the Materials Editor palette, under Generic, set the Color to Color By Object, then reduce the Glossiness value to 0.

7. To load an image file, click in the large, empty Image frame, then navigate to and select the image file. This file will be added to the Materials Browser and will be given the name "Default - Generic".

   Note: To edit the values such as Position, Rotation, and Scale of the image, double-click the image swatch in the Materials Editor to open the Texture Editor. I'll save coverage of this feature for a future Corner.

8. After loading an image file, you will see that file loaded in the Materials Browser and is named Default Generic. You can close the Materials Editor at this point.

9. Select one face of the objects, then right-click and click Select Similar to select all the faces on that layer.

10. Now click Default Generic in the Materials Browser to map the material to the selected object(s).

    The above steps are the fundamentals of assigning an external image file to an object in AutoCAD. There are several materials from the Autodesk Library in the Materials Browser, as shown in the figure.

    

11. Continue assigning materials to the objects in the drawing. When you're finished, click Close Block Editor and Save changes.

You will probably see the lines which define the edges of the 3D surface, so let's create a new visual style with no lines.

How to Tweak an Existing Visual Style

1. With the Realistic style current, expand the Visual Styles drop-down list, then click Save as a New Visual Style. I called this one Real_NoLines.

2. To edit the settings for this new Visual Style, on the Visual Styles panel, click the arrow in the corner to open the Visual Style Manager.

3. In the Visual Style Manager, click on your new visual style to make sure it's the one you will be editing.

4. Under Edge Settings, change the Show value to None.

5. Under Silhouette Edges, change the Show value to Yes. This punches up the image a bit.

   

6. Close the Visual Style Manager, then save your drawing!

When you create a new Visual Style, that style can be used on any other drawing; it's not drawing specific.

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