materials not working properly - anyone seen this?

[Doove]

 

When I open a colleague's drawing the 3D view doesn't show properly. He has assigned certain materials by layer (materialattach), to let it be transparent.

 

When I open it the materials seem to be there and assigned to the correct layers but in the dialog box (image above) there are these big red crosses.

 

Anyone know how to fix this?

 

I'm wondering if he has used OOTB materials but modded them; but surely these materials are all kept in the dwg file so it should be fine?

[Cad64]

I think your first course of action should be to talk with your colleague and find out what he did. I'm sure he can answer your question much faster than anyone else, since he created the file.

 

But just to clarify, do the materials show up in the viewport?

 

Bitmap materials are not kept in the drawing file. Bitmap materials are like Xref's. If you move the drawing to another folder, or computer, you may lose the materials. So to be sure, always use Etransmit when transferring files from one computer to another.

[Doove]

Thanks for reply Cad64,

 

I've talked to my colleague. We're on 2011 here and he used transparency settings. For some reason the transparencydisplay variable had changed to 0 so was not displaying transparency (the plot transparency check box had un-ticked too). Setting both these to 1 has solved problem.

 

No idea what the big red crosses indicate. Possibly that there is some display override (eg transparency) local to dwg file.

 

Haven't played much with transparency yet - used to creating materials for this type of effect. Still, we're using and learning Inventor now so I am totally confident all my display and presentation issues and workarounds will be a thing of the past.... hmmm...