Material Library "Slides"

[Steve Wojtynek]

When I loaded AccuRender nXt back in 2011, I remember using a wizard to convert my old AR3 (maybe AR4) MLIBs.  I used to able to search for materials in AR5 and there were "slides" showing the material colors and textures when I browsed to a new converted library.  I no longer get an image when I view an ".ARMaterial".  In the latest nXTRender (for AutoCAD2018) I now see PDFs, but no "slides" that I can use to select the material I want to load into my drawing.  How do I get "slides" to appear in my browser when I search MLIBs?

[Rich Hart]

See this page which explains how to register the DLL to see the thumbnails.

http://accurender.ning.com/forum/topics/material-thumbnails?comment...

See if that helps.

[Steve Wojtynek]

Not getting there...  Getting an error 0x80070005.  I'm attaching a screen shot PNG (don't know if I can do that) to show what I typed into the command line.  

[Rich Hart]

Are you able to open a command prompt as an administrator, and migrate to:

C:\Program Files\AccuRender nXt

And type in the command:

reg_thumb.bat, as below:

That works for me to register the dll. I see:

Or do you get that same error message?

[Steve Wojtynek]

Same error message...  Here's what I typed...

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

It doesn't look like you're running cmd.exe as an Administrator. To do this:

Go to Task Manager and select File->Run new task

Check the box which says "Create this task with administrative privileges."

Type "cmd" into the control marked Open.

You should see the word "Administrator: " in the title bar of the command prompt.

**********

Other things can still be going wrong here-- but give this a try.

[Steve Wojtynek]

It says it was successful... but I still don't have images in the browser.  See attached images of successful "regsvr32" and "___.ArMaterial" listings in browser window (accessed via AR5).

[Rich Hart]

Try switching the View to something like Large Icons:

I've also had people say they've had to reboot before the change took effect. Try that.

[Steve Wojtynek]

Nope... Rebooted a bunch of times since "successful REGSVR32".  Large, Medium, and Small Icon Views all show PDF icons with the names of the ArMaterials underneath.  The AR5 installation on my old computer (that died) worked fine.  When I transferred AR5 over to the new Windows 10 computer... it crapped out.  I'm wondering why Windows is assigning a PDF icon to the items.  Perhaps there's somewhere in Windows settings to unassign the PDF icons?  Where are those material "slides" stored (and what are the file extensions) when they are made?  Perhaps I can find them in the files I recovered from my crashed computer?

[Steve Wojtynek]

Figured it out...  I went into Windows File Explorer and double-clicked on one of the PDF icons with an ArMaterial name underneath.  Windows told me it didn't have a program assigned to open that file format, so I browsed to "nXtMaterialEditor64.exe" and assigned it to the "ArMaterial" file extension.  Magically, all the little PDF icons went away and I saw "slides" of materials instead.  (Now if I could only get rid of the spheres and convert the slides to cubes, I'd be really happy.  I can do that one by one, but I don't have a year to spend on it.  Any chance someone can write a macro to do that?)

Thanks for all the help!