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Is this possible?
Can multiple instances of the plugin material editor be opened at the same time?

No, but the plugin has a method for doing a similar thing.

1. open the database manager
2. open the material editor
3. select the material that contains the desired layer
4. drag the layer from the layers tree over the database manager
5. the database manager's Layers page should come to the front
6. drop the layer into a volume in the Layers Catalog

You can then drag layers from the Layers Catalog into any material; just do the opposite of the above steps, dropping the dragged layer on the top node in the material editor's layers tree.

Thx JD...you're the best...and so is the Rhino plugin, just love working with it. Joe

Update: Just tried it and maybe I'm not doing something right.
1. Layers page does not come up when dragging the layer over it.
2. If I manually select the layers catalog, it does not allow me to drop/paste the layer from the material editor, same for the bsdf catalog.

btw...I never knew these were there Just toooo busy.

Well, conceptually, each page in the database manager has three types of nodes:

1. a Catalog node
2. Volume nodes
3. component nodes

Each page has only one Catalog node, and you can't delete it; it's the root. Volume nodes contain either other Volume nodes, or component nodes, i.e. Layer, BSDF, etc. nodes.

So make sure you have at least one Volume node (select the Catalog node and click the Create a new Volume button in the toolbar) in the Layers Catalog; then, try dropping a layer from the material editor into the Volume node. I have no idea why the Layers page would not be automatically coming to the front when you drag a layer over the database manager; it works fine here.

got it, thx. Once I created a new volume in the layers catalog then the layers page opened automatically as you said. Joe