CREATING NEW MATERIALS

Once you start working with AutoCAD's materials, you'll soon realize that you don't really have a large selection. What is you need a white stucco material for a wall? Or grass for the lawn, or brushed aluminum, or... well, you get the picture. What you need to do is create your own materials.

Have a look at the sphere below. It looks like the same material you used for the tile and other samples in the previous lesson (Marble-Tan) In fact it is, only it has been modified.

To make a material transparent, just start up the RMAT command, click on the material you want to change and pick on the Modify button. If you didn't want to change the original material, pick on the Duplicate button instead. Changing the material here will not change the material in your library. You should see a dialog like this:

To make the material transparent, check the Transparency button on the left, then slide the value slider to about 50 - making the material 50% transparent. You can adjust other options as shown in this dialog box.

But what if want something totally different? Then you have to make a new material.

The first step is to locate an image that represents the material you want in your drawing. There are a number of sources available on the internet. Check out the links page for some. Below are 3 samples you can try for this lesson.

Metal Sample	Brick Sample	Wood Sample

Pick on any of the images above and when the new window opens, right click on the large image and select "Save image as..." and save it in a folder where you can find it easily.

Now start the RMAT command and pick on the New button. Give the new material a name, and then pick on the Find File button.

Once you have the image file selected and showing in the "File Name" box, pick the OK button. The dialog box will close and you will have your new material show up in your list of available materials.

That is all that is needed to create a new material. If you have an image editing program like Photoshop or Photoplus (free), you can adjust the colors and tints of your images so they are exactly as you need them.