Material Editor

[Garret Diduck]

Why does the Stand Alone Material Editor change the scale of mapped materials by the difference between metric and standard (25.4)? The units for the Stand Alone Material Editor are set to inches when it it launched. I can switch the units to metric and then back to inches and it will save the material correct, but I have to change the scale factors of the materials before saving. It's a huge pain and keeps me from using the 'SAME'.

Any suggestions or is this a 'feature'?

The 'SAME' is on the left and the Material Editor in AutoCAD is on the right. I loaded both materials from the saved version.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

There may be a bug-- but you'll need to have a procedure for me to follow so I can reproduce it.  

Internally (and in the .ArMaterial file), the material dimensions are always held in meters, as is most data in nXt.  The only thing that should change when you switch from one type of units to another in the editor is how those internal units are reported in the Dialog Boxes-- it doesn't change the material definition at all.  If you still think there's a problem, let me know by clearly outlining a step-by-step procedure to reproduce it and I'll take a look.  Include sample material files if helpful.

[Garret Diduck]

I'm not changing units. As a matter of fact, I don't want to change units.

I can create a material inside AutoCAD and save it to disk. I then open it in the 'SAME' and the scale of the material map is off as shown in the above example. The opposite is true as well. If I create a material outside of AutoCAD and then load it within AutoCAD, the scale of the material will be off, but I believe in the opposite direction (.039 vs 25.4). So in this instance I have to up the scale of the material. I'm out of my office, so I can't verify the direction of the scale.

I should add that the preview scale is also changes as well. So if the preview scale is originally set to 10, it will be 254 in the 'SAME'.

I work in inches in AutoCAD, BTW.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Come up with an example-- like a said, the material itself is always stored in meters regardless of which units you used to create it.  It's almost certainly just a matter of how the units are reported to you in the editor.  It's possible the Preview Scale may be a problem area, I don't know yet until I get your steps to reproduce.

[Garret Diduck]

1. Create a new, textured material in nXT

   a. set texture map scale to x=10 & y=10

   b. set preview scale to 10

2. save new material to disk

3. open newly saved material in the external nXT Material Editor

   a. texture map scale is now x=254 & y=254

   b. preview scale is now 254

The opposite is true if the material is created externally and loaded in AutoCAD. Both the x&y scales are .0394 and the preview scale is .39. 

If I save the material from the external nXT Material Editor and reload it in AutoCAD, the scales are back to sizes in #1 above.

So the issue seems to be, as you suggested, that the external material editor is reporting the wrong value or vice versa. Both materials render identically BTW despite having differing scales using the same material map.

The issue for me is working with materials outside of AutoCAD. I'd like to work with the same reported units that are in AutoCAD's material editor. Yeah, I know it's just a simple conversion, but when it's crunch time and you're working with a lot of materials, it needs to be straight forward.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Try the following-- open the external (non-AutoCAD) Material Editor without loading a material.  In the options pulldown menu change the Units from millimeters to inches.  Now try to open your AutoCAD created material.  Are the units correct?

[Garret Diduck]

No, the units are not correct when I do that. When I open the material editor, the units are/were already set to inches. The test above was done with the units set to inches.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Found it-- definitely a bug.  Give me a week or two to get it fixed and re-released.

[Garret Diduck]

Great! I'll be looking for the update.