[sebowitz]

all new to this, I managed to get it all to work some time ago and was really happy spent some more time learning other stuff. Huh now I'm back trying to render one of my project. For some reason i just cant get the material to stick the surface i choose. I forgot say that i work in rhino 5. I go to layers pick set propertise/ material/ check by plugins/ browse/ double click on the material i imported what am I missing?

[JDHill]

If you are able to do that (set the layer material to "plugin" and choose a material), then you have set Maxwell as the current renderer, so no problem there. Incidentally, you could also just drag the desired material from either the Database Manager > MXM Browser, or the Scene Manager > Materials window, and drop it on the desired layer.

It seems some parts of the puzzle are missing, though. First, do the objects in question use "Layer" material assignment? To find out, select an object, go to Object Properties > Material, and check value of the "Assign material by" drop-down. If it is assigned by "Object", then assigning different materials to the object's layer will have no effect. And second, are the objects in question block instances? In this case, you need to make sure you understand Rhino's "Parent" assignment, in which an object appearing in a block instance derives its material either from the instance, or if none is assigned there, from the layer of the instance (and not from the layer of the object as it exists in the block definition). If you don't mind this carefully, it can get pretty confusing, especially in the case of nested blocks.