[yolk]

hi mverta.err..JDHill.. my bad

i'm slowly getting the results i wish with the swx plug-in. but i have a few questions: where are the materials stored? in the swx part file itself? and the material catalog?

right now i want all my materials to be referenced, not embedded as i want one location with my correct materials. but when i change these materials in the mxed i have to got to the swx materials catalog, click on the changed materials, set them to embedded and then back to referenced again..then they update..is there an easier way to update all referenced materials at once? or do i have to close the scene and reopen it?

also: the standalone mxed the material browser does not always show me the current and latest changes..i often have to browse back and forth so the library is updated..i actually click on the folder icon (to cahnge the location of the material library) and set it one folder above..then go back to my materials folder and voila..it's updated..what i am doing wrong?

right now i'm assigning all materials on a part level..opening the parts, selecting the solid and assigning the material from my materials catalogue, then i save the part. but it happened to me several times that when i came back the other day, reopen the scene, some of the parts lost the material..how come?


besides that i think i now have a workflow where i can stay in swx and get what i want..before i always had to use studio.

[JDHill]

It sounds like you're fighting against the system a little bit - if you use the plugin's material editor instead of MXED, you will probably eliminate most of these difficulties. From the plugin's point of view, MXM files serve very little purpose, other than when you create a material by importing an MXM.

Regarding the materials catalog, it's not meant to be important where they're stored - they're not MXM files, so they have no value anywhere but in the Rhino/SW plugins. If you want to know, the place they're stored is under your user profile's app data folder; the actual location is determined at runtime to make sure the plugin uses a location where it has permission to write files, and where it can determine the location consistently on each machine. Besides for this, copies of materials are saved in the document itself, to be used in cases where they are not found in the database when that document is opened on another machine.

As to the Referenced vs. Embedded issue, this feature is designed to be useful in situations where you might be using plugins other than SW and Rhino and you want to use common MXM files to share data them. Each time the material is loaded from disk (i.e. the first time you access it during a session), a Referenced material will re-read the source MXM, therefore reflecting changes made to it. The feature is not meant to be used during the session, but I'll see what it would take to make Referenced materials listen for changes to their source MXMs and auto-update.

I am simplifying things for the next version, since I've gotten a good bit of feedback indicating confusion. I have come up with something which does what it needs to do, but which does not have a materials database - it will basically be as if you removed the materials page from the database manager and replaced it with the MXM Browser.

Regarding missing materials in a part document, I am not aware of any specific way to make this happen. Is there anything in particular about the part? I mean, is it a native SW part, or is it imported from another app? Not that I'm sure it will give me a solid idea of the problem, but the more you could tell me about the situation, the better.

[yolk]

thanx alot JDHill for the explanations. glad to hear things will get simpler in the next version as i really want just one correct material library with the latest changes. the loss of materials probably happened when swx crashed on me several times - if it happens again without crashing i let you know.