Adding materials to a 3d object

I too am one of those who are just fooling around with it to get back some of what I used to know. I once drew sprockets for a company a long time ago. found my AutoCAD I bought a few years ago at a flea market for ten bucks. loaded it up a couple of weeks ago and started playing with it. wanted to brush up my 3d skills wasn't great at it then but could do it.

Want to add a material to an object (wood) but it doesn't show up in the drawing window or when I render it. every things just gray all the time no matter what I do. I will go the material list and click select object then pick a material and add it to the object but nothing happens. what am I doing wrong?

Edit: I'm in the 3d part of Cad not the standard.

Materials can be added directly to objects or assigned to a layer.

Have you used the material mapping feature?

Have you set up any lights?

Is a background being used?

Here are the standard links I point everyone to when they are just starting out in Autocad 3D. Lots of good, basic information to be found here:

http://www.we-r-here.com/cad_08/tutorials/level_3/3-9.htm

http://www.we-r-here.com/cad_08/tutorials/level_3/3-13.htm

http://www.we-r-here.com/cad_08/tutorials/level_3/3-14.htm

These tutorials are for 2008, but should be basically the same for 2007.

I put a big green square and wanted to use it as grass, measured my porch cause I want to add a new part to the roof to cover my un-covered part of the deck. As I said everything is gray but the part I extruded as grass, its green. played around a little made some 2X6's and 4x4's up put them all in place and it looks like my porch only gray. gonna read the tuts above and see what I come up with. Its been awhile since I fiddled around with Cad but with every ones help I hope to get better at it. Wish I could have gone to school for this.

Ok I was reading the tut and going back a clicking exactly what it said and I don't see all those materials its talking about. Do I have to download or place the cd back in and add them. I thought I said full install. the last time I fooled around with 3d was in R14.

Edit: Sorry found it.