[polynurb]

basically this function is there by exporting a mat-library from rhino..

however , speaking for myself, I often have to open up many old rhino files until i find the material i was looking for.. i'd be great if a library/single materials could be extracted (or viewed) without opening the .3dm in rhino itself!

thanks,

daniel

[JDHill]

Hmm...I don't really think that will happen -- the plugin has to read the data from the .3dm; that implies that Rhino has loaded the plugin, and that implies that Rhino is running. It would theoretically be possible to write a standalone .exe that could open .3dm files directly, and extract this data (though I'm not sure how that would work with plugin data), but in that case, it seems like you wouldn't really be gaining anything: rather than starting Rhino to get at your materials, you would just be starting a different .exe to do it -- so why not just use Rhino?

It sounds like you may be looking for the wrong solution to a problem -- wouldn't switching to a linked-mxm workflow be better? If you are very often finding yourself needing to share materials between documents, that would seem to make more sense to me.

But, I may be misunderstanding the scenario -- please feel free to clarify.

[polynurb]

thanks for the quick reply!...

my idea came from the following scenario:

i am working on a big rhino file.. tons of stuff .. long save and load times... then i am missing a material .. or remember an older file where i "could" find it..

now opening another finalized document of that size would exhaust my ram, especially when PS and all the other stuff one needs (3dcoat/pixplant etc.) are also running in the background..

i would have liked to just "browse" an 3dm for the mats, without loading the geometry..

your suggestion about the linked mxm workflow is totally right.. but it implies "refurbishing" old files and sitting down one weekend getting out all the materials worth being used in the future.

anyway.. i get your point!

daniel