Please Note: Our Discussion forums have moved. If you would like to discuss this article or any aspect of Revit, please do so at www.forums.revit.biz We will be more than pleased to help you with ANY Revit query. Welcome to part 14 of this 17 part series on creating your own custom model components using the Family Editor. If you have just stumbled across this article without reading the previous parts of the series, you may want to start here OK. So we now know how to form solid geometry. But what about materials? How do we make the individual parts of our component look like they’re made out of “something real”? Before we dive into applying materials to our solid forms, I want you to take a look at the Materials Control Panel, if you’re not already familiar with it. Please note that all Revit elements (ie ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that has a 3D presence in Revit) has an associated material- even if it’s only the grey, bland “Default” material. The first decision you need to make is: Do any parts of my component need to have a “User-Changeable” material? For example, if you create your own 3D table, do you wish for Users to be able to (easily) change the material of the table top? If so, you are going to need to set up a Parameter (either Instance or Type) that lets a User change the material from within the Element Properties panel of the finished component. Doing so makes your components much more flexible with little extra effort at the creation stage. But to start with we will simply add a material to a solid extrusion. Let’s make a simple cube and define it’s material. For this example I’m going to use the “Generic Model” family template 
So let’s go ahead and create our cube. You should be familiar with forming a Solid Extrusion by now. Select Solid Form > Solid Extrusion… 
I draw out the profile of the extrusion (800mm x 800mm) 
And set the extrusion depth to 800mm 
Now before we complete the extrusion process, I want you to select “Extrusion Properties” from the Design Bar on the left…. 
This (as you would expect) invokes the “Element Properties” control panel for the extrusion that we are in the process of creating. Towards the bottom of the panel you will see a section marked “Materials and Finishes”… 
At the moment it is set on “<By Category>” for it’s material. What this means is that this particular element (the 3D solid extrusion) will have a material assigned to it, to match whatever category has been assigned. And the default category is unsurprisingly “Default”. So what this means in reality is: Because you haven’t told Revit that you want this object to be made from any “specific” material, it will form it out of a bland, default material. If we go ahead and click on the material name (ie “<By Category>”) you will see the choice of specific materials available for this element…. 
And that’s it! 5 materials to choose from. You may well be asking “but what about the 200-odd materials that I normally have available to use?”. Sorry, you’re out of luck! They are not defined in the Family Templates. If you need specific materials you are best off developing those materials within a Template File and then saving THAT file as a template for your future components. Anyway, back to our cube. Let’s change it’s material to Glass… 
Select Glass from the list and hit “OK”. Select “OK” to come out of the Elements Properties panel and then select “Finish Sketch” to let Revit create your extrusion. Switch to a 3D View and check out your cube in all it’s 3D glazed glory… 
And it really is as simple as that. Every time your create a solid form (either by extrusion, sweep, blend, etc) just go into it’s Properties and choose it’s material. In the second part of this article, we will look at how we can make the material we assign to the cube “User-Definable” from within a Project.
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