Wall material frustration, not changing as expected

[jtcapa1]

I've had this problem about 3 times a year.  Just often enough to forget the solution.  Mainly because it is not real obvious, although logical if you are a power user.

In a rush to change exterior wall textures, I will use the camera-paint option (bad). Or I will use the rainbow tool and force a change for that wall type (semi-bad) or I will open that walls specification dialog box and monkey around with the texture (semi-bad).

 

All of these tend to "uncheck" a very important box, nested down inside the default settings.  Then the problems appear when you want to make more changes.  So I call SAS staff to get the answer and I wanted to publish the steps here for others and myself, when I forget again.

 

- Support Answer -

Luke M
Friday, Jul 28, 2023 - 04:32 PM PDT

Hi John,

Thanks for attaching the plan so I could take a closer look. I believe I found the issue, and it is in fact related to a check box that I just had forgotten about while we were on the phone. Here's the fix:

1. Open Default Settings, expand Walls, select Exterior Wall, and click Edit.
2. Select the Materials panel, select the Exterior Wall Surface component, and click Select Material.
3. At the bottom of the Select Material dialog, check the Use default material box, then click OK, OK, Done to return to plan view.
4. Open a camera view, then go to the 3D menu and select Material Painter > Material Painter.
5. 3. At the bottom of the Select Material dialog, check the Use default material box, then click OK.
6. In the bottom edit toolbar on the left, make sure Material Painter Plan Mode is selected.
7. Click on one of the exterior walls (this will replace the material with the default material for all of the walls.

At this point, you should now be able to change the wall type for any wall in your plan (as well as newly drawn walls), and that change will reflect in camera views.

 

Presto-Chango, Bob's your Uncle, and it is fixed.  :-)

 

[EastonBuilders]

This does not work. This only works if by some grace of god the default material is the material you want. If it is not, well, then you're SOL. The glitches in this program are pretty frustrating and make you run around in circles for hours.

[PitMan71]

I think what the support team was saying is that after painting materials, if you want to return to the default material and make future changes through the wall settings, the Material Painter’s Default option is the correct way to do that.

I have run into this situation several times myself. The Material Painter can be a very powerful tool, but in my experience it can also create downstream issues—especially when another user is working in the file and doesn’t realize how a material was actually applied. That can definitely lead to some frustrating troubleshooting.

That being said, once you have a better understanding of how Chief handles directives, defaults, and material assignments, you can usually work backward and unravel what initially appears to be a mysterious issue. Understanding where the material display is being controlled from makes a big difference.