Is there a database of standard material properties?

[LarryO]

And a means for 3d elements to take on those qualities?

 

Like for an extrusion representing steel plate be able to report what it's weight is after having cut it into an irregular shape. And then be able to quickly switch it to aluminum, glass or even plywood for instance. Same with all the structural shapes built into the application, HSS tubes, Beams, Angles. To be able to select and report their material in the OI palette and volume/weight of the object created. That info being interfaced from a database in VWs just like the data of the shape profiles are currently taken from predefined tables.

[Tom W.]

22 minutes ago, LarryO said:

And a means for 3d elements to take on those qualities?

 

Like for an extrusion representing steel plate be able to report what it's weight is after having cut it into an irregular shape. And then be able to quickly switch it to aluminum, glass or even plywood for instance.

 

Have you tried VW Materials? There are steel, aluminium, etc Materials already in the libraries with density info built into them. So you can report weight of 3D solids using Materials (volume x density) in worksheets at least, but not in OIP...

 

And the data is not derived from a database, it is relying on you inputting it into Material resources but once it's done it's done. And unless you're talking about hundreds of different materials it would only take minutes to set up.

[zoomer]

30 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

There are steel, aluminium, etc Materials already

 

Since I used these in the first project now,

 

I think there hasn't much changed since the release of "BIM" Materials ...

I would welcome that Library being extended until, at least 80% coverage

of common materials used in Architecture (, Landmark and Spotlight ?)

is covered and completely filled with physical data and nice "render"

(PBR) Materials (still called RW "Textures")

 

I wondered how many common materials I had to build from scratch

and add by myself for a small residential project.

 

And I always think it is better this is done in the VW central for the good

of all users, opposed to each user doing it again and again separately.

And as we have VW US, ahm, VW international, to give access to all

localized Material Libraries, which some seem to be already a bit more

extended, in case someone wins a competition and want to build something

over there. And if not prioritized,

At least offer a platform where users can share their Material creations.

[LarryO]

Thanks Tom.

 

That material selection ability seems to have promise (I tried it initially in VW2019) but as you say that database doesn't seem to have mass or similar analysis data like heat transmission etcetera but seems to be built for presentation and rendering needs. Perhaps I'm not finding where these physical properties are or need to be??? I find the rendering data ok in the rendering tab, but no records are attached when selecting the material. I was looking to find a standardized nomenclature at least in which I could enter the values you say are missing. And I don't quite fully comprehend if this is an IFC task but I find understanding that structure to be overwhelming challenging to navigate for simply wanting to add mass etc. to the built-in elements. And there being no built-in tool for sheet goods every one of us would be starting from scratch for a plate of glass or steel or aluminum or ....

Larry

[Tom W.]

Just now, zoomer said:

 

Since I used these in the first project now,

 

I think there hasn't much changed since the release of "BIM" Materials ...

I would welcome that Library being extended until, at least 80% coverage

of common materials used in Architecture (, Landmark and Spotlight ?)

is covered and completely filled with physical data and nice "render"

(PBR) Materials (still called RW "Textures")

 

I wondered how many common materials I had to build from scratch

and add by myself for a small residential project.

 

And I always think it is better this is done in the VW central for the good

of all users, opposed to each user doing it again and again separately.

And as we have VW US, ahm, VW international, to give access to all

localized Material Libraries, which some seem to be already a bit more

extended, in case someone wins a competition and want to build something

over there. And if not prioritized,

At least offer a platform where users can share their Material creations.

 

Yes but often you are using Materials to represent specific products with manufacturer/supplier/price/etc info. Plus we all have different ideas about the textures, surface hatches + section fills to use, plus all the other data... I am very happy making my own Materials. I think they are a game-changer.

[zoomer]

3 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

I am very happy making my own Materials.

 

Would be a great problem if we couldn't add own Materials or edit offered Materials .....

But I think there could be a longer list of offered and correctly set base Materials.

 

 

7 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

Yes but often you are using Materials to represent specific products with manufacturer/supplier/price/etc info

 

Even better, make commercial manufacturer's Materials available (for all) !

[Tom W.]

7 minutes ago, LarryO said:

Thanks Tom.

 

That material selection ability seems to have promise (I tried it initially in VW2019) but as you say that database doesn't seem to have mass or similar analysis data like heat transmission etcetera but seems to be built for presentation and rendering needs. Perhaps I'm not finding where these physical properties are or need to be??? I find the rendering data ok in the rendering tab, but no records are attached when selecting the material. I was looking to find a standardized nomenclature at least in which I could enter the values you say are missing. And I don't quite fully comprehend if this is an IFC task but I find understanding that structure to be overwhelming challenging to navigate for simply wanting to add mass etc. to the built-in elements. And there being no built-in tool for sheet goods every one of us would be starting from scratch for a plate of glass or steel or aluminum or ....

Larry

 

It's not a built-in database of physical properties by any stretch but all that info is easily available elsewhere. Materials are an incredibly versatile + flexible format for storing all manner of data alongside attributes + it doesn't take long to build up your own bespoke library. Once done so the dividends are enormous when you call on them + assign them to Walls, Slabs, Roofs, Hardscapes, Landscape Areas + indeed 3D solids.

 

 

To retrieve the data you need to report on it, either in worksheets, data tags or graphic legends.

[Tom W.]

Just now, zoomer said:

Even better, make commercial manufacturer's Materials available (for all) !

 

I just think the sheer range of possible data would be too large to do anything meaningful. I'm much happier with a blank canvas + putting what I want in. The Materials in the libraries, like any of the other resources, are just examples of what you can do, it's up to us to make them our own. How many Wall/Roof/Slab/Hardscape/Landscape Area styles do you use off the shelf? I have never used ANY of the standard content.

[zoomer]

2 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

How many Wall/Roof/Slab/Hardscape/Landscape Area styles do you use off the shelf?

 

None.

Unfortunately !

 

It starts with naming .... over Class usage .... over rests/traces of imperial units ...

Same as for PIO default settings.

 

But a (BIM) Material is something that is pretty universal and absolutely fixed on the other

side. The physical data is pretty much given. It would be worth to have a Render Material with

high quality, non tiling image textures applied.

Especially it is a manufacturers Material, it is nearly completely fixed.

 

But for now there is not so much there that you could simply take as a template and easily adapt.

I did not find some Basic Carpets, basic mosaic parquets, or overall attractive concretes and creeds.

Insulation selection is also very limited.

And as always, with VW's non existing previews it is neither estimable if a Material looks

agreeable nor to find a better "RW Texture"

 

BTW,

I find the system of Base Materials and Mix Material pretty non legible in RM,

pretty confusing because of Naming conflicts, ...

and Materials are the most RM Spammers ignoring my Folder Hierarchy, worse

than importing Library Symbols or Door "hardware".

 

And yes, there is indeed no single Material I would have used as it came.

I noticed some missing physical values completely, I nearly changed all Hatches

and of course all Render Materials. Not very successful so far though.

[E|FA]

My reason for not using Materials is the fact that not all items can be assigned a Material.  Therefore, there's a need to maintain duplicate Classes and Materials for the same real-world materials that occur in both types of VW objects.  I have a hard enough time maintaining Classes, so decided to hold off on using Materials when they were first introduced.  I believe there have been no updates or improvements to Materials since then, and I fear that they will remain incomplete.

[Tom W.]

But if you had a painted hardwood door for example would you seek to assign a Sapele (or whatever) Material to the jambs, rails, etc + report on the quantity of sapele the door contained + the supplier, cost, lambda, etc of that raw material? Unlikely, unless you were a machine shop fabricating doors perhaps. More logical would be to use the existing Door data fields to record the fact it was a painted sapele door + the supplier, cost, U value, etc of the full assembled item.

 

I'm not saying it wouldn't be useful to assign Materials across the board but this really is secondary to their main function which is to use them with Wall/Slab/Roof/Hardscape/Landscape Area components where they are very very powerful.

 

If all you're concerned about is assigning attributes then sure you are probably as well to stick with classes but Materials are designed to do much more than this. They tell you what the materials/products in your Walls, etc actually are, not just what they look like.

[LarryO]

23 minutes ago, E|FA said:

My reason for not using Materials is the fact that not all items can be assigned a Material. 

You are correct; which is one reason we didn't adopt using them in 2019. HSS tubing, steel beam profiles, angles and others do not have the ability to assign materials to them unless they are embedded into a modeling process like addition, subtraction, etc., then the resulting shape will have the material check box available. That work around to get basic functionality for plugin like objects was simply not conducive to creating a clean model. Every time you do add or subtract, radius lines more often than not behave unexpectedly, even when the smoothing angle is set to 20° (normally it only needs 5°-7° to remove them).

[E|FA]

@Tom W. I don't doubt the utility of Materials and was very disappointed when I discovered the limitations.  VW should be able to handle both needs - visual representation AND data reporting.  I already have to maintain Classes for visual purposes, and I was hopeful that Materials would complement (or even them for the data purposes (and replace them for visual purposes).  If VW finished development of Materials for use in all objects, there would be no need for duplication and we would all be able to take full advantage of Materials' "power".  

Edited April 18, 2023 by E|FA

[zoomer]

20 hours ago, Tom W. said:

But if you had a painted hardwood door for example would you seek to assign a Sapele (or whatever) Material to the jambs

 

My Problems with the Materials is currently more that I have some visible

concrete Walls that are painted white or beige.

Basically my structural material is always the same reinforced concrete like

in many multi ply Wall or Slab Styles.

 

But if I would start to add a 0,2 mm paint layer and such to my PIO Styles,

I would quickly end up each singe Wall needing a separate Wall Style ....

 

So currently I workaround by e.g. having 3 concrete BIM Material (doublets)

an original and two copies using a Paint RW Material ....

 

(That is why I always propagate that all finishes in BIM should be separated

from Structural Elements and better controlled from Space Objects and

Facades (or parts of Facade Areas).

[Tom W.]

15 hours ago, zoomer said:

So currently I workaround by e.g. having 3 concrete BIM Material (doublets)

an original and two copies using a Paint RW Material ....

 

Can you explain what you mean...? I think when you say 'BIM Material' you mean a Material + when you say 'RW Material' you mean a Texture...? What is a 'doublet'?

 

But I agree that when you have a solid concrete or solid masonry wall + want a painted finish there is no easy solution. I have done it like you say by adding a thin 'Paint' component to the Wall style but this seems overkill for something that should be simpler to achieve. I'm not sure that this is the fault of Materials though. The most straightforward option is to render by object + choose a different texture for the side of the Wall that will be painted: you can then use a Compound Material to assign two products/materials to the same Wall component - in this case concrete + paint - and report on both. In fact in the case of a painted concrete wall you could include the reinforcing steel as well so three elements contained within a single Wall component. The problem with rendering by object however is that the holes in the Wall can only be one texture or the other so you end up with either paint showing on the outside where you want to see concrete or concrete on the inside where you want to see paint. To do it properly we're back to having a separate 'paint' component in the Wall then using Wall Closures to bring the paint into the door/window reveals... And then the paint component would have its own paint Material...

 

But the ability to use Compound Materials to represent Wall components containing multiple materials is I think very good. For example a timber framed wall with insulation in between: you can report on the precise amount of timber + insulation per m2 + the r-value for the combined materials is calculated properly. Previously you could only enter a  single lambda value for each component + it had to be done on a component by component basis i.e. re-entered for each Wall/Slab/Roof you created. Now you just enter the lambda once for the Material + it is factored into every Wall/Slab/Roof component that uses that Material + any Compound Material it's used in.

 

I made a Wishlist item a while back about the need to be able to save/import/export Wall/Slab/Roof components between styles as there was so much repetition between them + room for error + it was hard to check across multiple components that you were using the same settings in each, but then I realised that this is what Materials do...

 

 

[zoomer]

3 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

Can you explain what you mean...? I think when you say 'BIM Material' you mean a Material + when you say 'RW Material' you mean a Texture...?

 

Yes.

 

RW Textures is something in the whole 3D and Render world (even in CAD's)

as Material - or maybe Render Material. While Textures are always only a

part of a Material. Like Image files or procedural textures.

 

VW Materials I see elsewhere a Building Materials. As Building Materials

definitions define all kind of information, physical properties, prices, R-values,

2D and 3D appearance, .... iI think BIM Materials is quite adequate term.

 

 

13 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

What is a 'doublet'?

 

I mean that I create some redundant copies of the reinforced concrete Material

just for the paint finish.

 

In this case it is ok because it is just about 2 pretty peripheral single component Wall Styles.

 

For some related multi component Wall situations I also thought of assigning render materials

with the new by Face mode.

Have not tried yet if that always will work with PIOs in general. Or for parts of Walls, between

T-joining Walls. Will see then.

[Tom W.]

3 minutes ago, zoomer said:

For some related multi component Wall situations I also thought of assigning render materials

with the new by Face mode.

Have not tried yet if that always will work with PIOs in general.

 

It doesn't work but be nice if it did 🙂

[zoomer]

1 minute ago, Tom W. said:

It doesn't work but be nice if it did 🙂

 

No Walls Face Render Material overwriting possible ?

Thought I had that seen in the feature video ?

(Maybe I just mix it up with Bricscad)

Ouch ....

Then I'm lost.

 

I do a BIM Model.

I am not willing to start extracting Faces and move them 0,5 mm in front of Walls 🙂

 

[line-weight]

On 4/18/2023 at 11:13 PM, E|FA said:

@Tom W. I don't doubt the utility of Materials and was very disappointed when I discovered the limitations.  VW should be able to handle both needs - visual representation AND data reporting.  I already have to maintain Classes for visual purposes, and I was hopeful that Materials would complement (or even them for the data purposes (and replace them for visual purposes).  If VW finished development of Materials for use in all objects, there would be no need for duplication and we would all be able to take full advantage of Materials' "power".  

 

Bumping this thread instead of continuing discussion on this other thread where "materials" are a bit off topic.

 

Having had a bit of a look just now, it does seem to be the case that they have been further implemented since 2023.

 

In VW2023 materials could not be assigned to the components of door objects for example, but it seems that they can be now in VW2025.

 

It would be useful to have a definitive list of where they can't be used. I'll quote @Tom W. from the other thread...

 

18 hours ago, Tom W. said:

 

I had a quick look + the only objects I could find that don't accept Materials were WinDoor, Massing Model, Floor, Pillar, Roadway, Ramp + Chain Extrude...

 

I imagine there are probably a few custom/3rd party plugins where they still can't be used.

 

 

 

 

[Tom W.]

4 minutes ago, line-weight said:

I imagine there are probably a few custom/3rd party plugins where they still can't be used.

 

Yes I meant to say in the other thread that Baseboard Objects (AFDesign) don't support Materials either. But I hasten to add: would I ever want to use a Material for this or any of the other excluded objects I mentioned? Unlikely. I don't really use them on Doors or Windows either. These items aren't being constructed on site, they are being sourced off the shelf or from a fabricator.

[line-weight]

5 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

 

Yes I meant to say in the other thread that Baseboard Objects (AFDesign) don't support Materials either. But I hasten to add: would I ever want to use a Material for this or any of the other excluded objects I mentioned? Unlikely. I don't really use them on Doors or Windows either. These items aren't being constructed on site, they are being sourced off the shelf or from a fabricator.

 

Similar I think to @E|FA, I would want to use them at least for visual purposes. Maybe I have windows which use a particular timber for the frames, and this matches the timber I am using for some internal joinery items. At the moment I can use the same materials class for both - and if I want to make a change to the texture that I use to represent that material, I just need to change it once, in one place, in the class settings.

 

Or maybe I have skirting boards painted to match door architraves, and so on.

 

(How to deal with painted materials is a whole different question of course! Is white painted plaster the same material as green painted plaster? At the moment I have to have them set up as two different material (classes). They both look exactly the same in detail sections but not in shaded perspectives. If I want to change the hatch used when they are sectioned, I have to remember to go and change this in all colour variants. Can something clever be done with compound materials? All for future investigation.)

[zoomer]

7 hours ago, Tom W. said:

But I hasten to add: would I ever want to use a Material for this or any of the other excluded objects I mentioned? Unlikely. I don't really use them on Doors or Windows either.

 

Same as Story Levels ....

I would like to apply them to all VW Objects ....

Even to Lines a Rectangles or Text.

Could be a IFC_Cable or IFC_Covering .....

 

And i would like to have a more complete Building Material Library,

with all Building Materials and Data, to start from.

 

Then I could create my Project Materials on top of this.

E.g. Would with white paint texture for my Windows.

 

Currently it doesn't make much sense if I use any given Concrete

to build a duplicate for Travertin Floor Panels/Tiles,

just because I estimate that an avialable Concrete may have the

most similar physical weight and maybe Energos data ....

[line-weight]

17 hours ago, zoomer said:

Same as Story Levels ....

I would like to apply them to all VW Objects ....

Yes.

[digitalcarbon]

sometime ago I was developing this data base in OPENBOM which is a cloud based Bill of Materials...ran out of work in that area so need to stop my subscription.

surprisingly I still have access.  it seems like there should be a way to make this public.  

 

 

[line-weight]

I am realising that if I want to control textures primarily via "Materials" rather than classes, assigning them is rather more laborious.

 

If I want to draw a simple object and then control its texture by class, the routine is:

1. Draw the object

2. Go to the OIP, click once to expand the "class" dropdown which opens immediately

3. Click on the class I want.

 

It seems that if I want to do the same using Materials, I have to:

1. Draw the object

2. Go to the OIP and tick the "use material" box

3. Click on the newly appeared "materials" dropdown

4. Wait for a short delay while a resource browser-like dialogue opens

5. Click on the material I want

6. Click "select".

 

I am yet to find out whether this becomes annoying when I am drawing a lot of new objects.