Materials can bring your model to life. Materials can be as simple as paint—matte or glossy or anywhere between. They can be opaque, transparent, reflective, or nonreflective. You can apply representations of realistic, real-world materials like stone, marble, glass, polished metal, fabric … the list is almost endless. AutoCAD 2012 comes with a material library of literally thousands of different material types, and assigning them to objects can be as simple as dragging from a palette and dropping on an object. Or it can be as complex as you care to make it.
Prior to AutoCAD 2011, you created and stored materials in individual drawings, which made them difficult to manage. AutoCAD 2011 introduced the Materials Browser, which makes managing materials much easier. Partnered with the Materials Browser is the new Materials Editor, accessible from a tool button in the Materials Browser.
The new materials libraries introduced in AutoCAD 2011 took up vast amounts of hard disk space. That was seen as wasteful for people who never did renderings, so in AutoCAD 2012, most of the material libraries are online. The first time you click the Render button in AutoCAD 2012, AutoCAD asks whether you want to go online to install the Medium Material Library. If rendering looks interesting to you, go ahead and install the library.
Use the MATBROWSER command to display the Materials Browser palette (see Figure 23-6), from which you can create, edit, and manage in the current drawing or material libraries. You add materials to your drawing by using a preconfigured material or creating a custom material.
Follow these steps to create and manage a new material:
The Materials Editor palette is displayed (see Figure 23-6).
The attributes that you can edit vary, based upon the type of material template that you choose to start with. When you finish editing the material, you can close or hide the Materials Editor palette. The material is automatically added to the current drawing.
The Create Library dialog box is displayed.
Now you can access the material from any drawing. You can create categories if you want to manage multiple materials within a library. In the Materials Browser, right-click the library name, choose Create Category, and then enter a name for the new category. After the category is created, simply select the material from the right side of the Materials Browser and drag it to the new category.
You can open the Materials Editor directly from the Ribbon by clicking the Materials panel launcher (the little arrow at the right end of the Materials panel label).
Which materials you use in a model depends on what you're trying to represent. For example, you might choose to make a material semitransparent to communicate an idea rather than a true material selection. After you create a material, you can apply it to the objects in your 3D model. You can apply materials to objects in the following ways: