[Josephus Holt]

should Auto update linked materials be checked on or off typically?

[JDHill]

It depends on your preferred workflow. Linked mode is provided primarily for situations where you want to be able to control the appearance of multiple documents using a single MXM file. When it is not enabled, then the material will exist on its own in its parent document. The linking is one-way, meaning that when you open a document with a linked material, what happens is:

a. the plugin reads the material definition stored in the (Rhino) document
b. if the material is using linked mode, the plugin looks for the mxm file it wants to link to
c. if that is found, then the current state of that mxm will be read into the material

If the mxm is not found, that will be indicated as an error in the plugin's material editor and the material definition as it was stored in the file will be used (meaning, a broken mxm link is not a destructive error; the file will still render just as it did the last time it was saved). If you use linked mode without understanding what it does though, it could prove to be somewhat unsettling - as it is a one-way link, any changes you made in the plugin's material editor will effectively be lost next time you open the document. The plugin provides a special option that is designed to help with that possible scenario: Ignore Linked MXM Mode. The scenario where you would want to enable this option is very specific:

a. you have a document that you know uses linked materials
b. you know that you have modified those materials in the document and saved it
c. you know that next time you open the document, your changes are going to be lost
d. you would like to be able to get at the materials as exist now in the document

In this case, you'd enable Ignore Linked MXM Mode and then open the document. The plugin will not attempt to link any linked materials, and you can either export the materials as they are, or disable their MXM linking switches and save the document before again disabling the Ignore MXM Linking option to return to your normal 'linked' workflow.

There are also a couple of other options related to this in plugin options. Auto-update Linked Materials allows you to tailor how aggressively the plugin behaves in its attempts to keep your linked materials in sync with their associated mxm files. If is enabled, then the plugin listens to the file system to find out if you modify a target mxm file during the modeling session; if it senses this, as would happen if you edited the mxm file in MXED, the plugin will then read the new state of the edited mxm file into those materials which link to it. In the Material Defaults section there is one final setting, MXM Mode, which simply determines whether new materials will be created with MXM Linking enabled or not; the state of this option is what determines whether you primarily use a 'linked' workflow or not.

[Josephus Holt]

JD, GREAT explanation...I'll have to think through my workflow, but right off-hand since I customize so much from one project to another likely the unlinked mode will be best.

thank you much, Joe