Assigning a Material to a Surface

To assign a material to a surface, you can:

  • Drag and drop from the Materials editor,
  • Drag and drop from active element in the Matter sidebar's material library,
  • Drag and drop from a selected element in the Matter sidebar's material library.

The use of the key modifies, Ctrl, Alt, and Shift, can optimize the assignment of materials to one or several surfaces of the active model.

From right to left: Starting scene; CTRL = replace on all surfaces with same material; MAJ = apply as label.

Ctrl: The Ctrl modifier replaces a given material with a new material on all of the product surfaces to which the first material was assigned. The new material will thus be identically assigned to all of the same surfaces as the previous material had been.

Alt: The Alt modifier resets the material's position in the scene. This reset is carried out according to the surface mapping that was calculated in Shaper. If you have transformed the surface with the rotation or translation modes, using the Alt modifier will recalculate its original position. This command can also be combined with the Shift modifier in order to position a material according to an absolute grid determined by the surface mapping.

Ctrl+Shift: Combining the Ctrl+Shift modifiers gives access to the context menu containing advanced assignment options:

  • Apply material to:
    • this surface, in the visible aspect layer,
    • this surface, in the active aspect layer,
    • all of the surfaces that are currently using the same material as this surface,
    • all of the surfaces that have the same tags as this surface.
  • Apply as label on active aspect layer to:
    • this surface, with the choice among the mappings calculated for this surface,
    • all of the surfaces using the same material on the same mapping,
  • Replace a label applied to this surface,
  • Replace a label applied to this surface and to all of the visible surfaces where that label is also used.