Discover the intricacies of using a material tag within Revit and understand its potential benefits and drawbacks. This article offers a comprehensive guide on how to use material tags in Revit, the complexities that come along with it, and why sometimes resorting to generic tags can be more efficient.
Key Insights
- The application of a material tag within Revit allows you to identify the different materials associated with a particular object. However, it might pose an issue if certain parts of the item do not have a material associated with them.
- Using material tags can sometimes lead to overcomplication, especially if the same material is used for multiple elements but requires different identifications. This requires creating multiple glass materials within the project.
- Despite the ability to schedule materials using material tags, the method can be complicated and rigid. Inaccuracies can occur if the system is not strictly followed, which is why the usage of generic tags is sometimes preferred over the built-in material tag.
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If we were to use the actual material tag within Revit, I just want to go through what this looks like and how it could work really well for us, but it could also be a problem. And so if I go to material tag, we can go to our cabinet here, and this is a glass door cabinet. So the first thing it's going to look for is any of the materials that are associated with it.
And so the wood portions don't have a material associated. And so if I were to find something that I could tag in this, because these are all LinkedIn, you can see here it says soda, lime, glass, right? But this one gave me a question mark. And so it's the same thing if we were to look at the family that creates this tag, it's going with material description.
Well, if that's not what I wanted, then I could edit the label and see, okay, well, instead of description, maybe we want it to grab the mark. And so if I say, okay, and then load it into the project, and this is just an example, you don't necessarily have to follow along here. I'll go ahead and overwrite that version.
And you can see it's going to give me the question mark because I don't necessarily have a material associated with that one. But if I were to do that to say, our tile here, which we've applied to this project, I can then look at that material from our wall tile, even though I've called it WT1, the material, everything's WT1 on this, you can see WT1. But I need to go in to our identity.
And you can see whether it's called the name, there's the description, which is what it was pulling from before. And then if I give the mark an actual name to it, and I call it WT-1, then I start to arrive at the same type of thing here. So you can see this material as WT1, this was the soda glass.
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If I were to go to my materials here from the Manage tab, and trouble is, I got to find the glass that was used, but you can see soda lime glass here. I can say GL-1. And we get to the point where I could do it the same way.
But you can kind of see how we're a little handcuffed with using these materials. And the trouble that you run into here is this one didn't even pick up. But essentially, if you're using the same glass material for multiple things, but you want it to be different, you have to make sure that you've got multiple glass materials within the project.
And this way, I'm able to use the same glass material for multiple things if I'm tagging it manually in this case. And so I did feel compelled to show you guys that you can use the material tag, and you can even schedule the materials that way too, because there are material takeoff, and there are definitely schedules that are associated specifically with materials. But what I have found over the years is that they tend to be overcomplicated, and they do get you into a position where you have to really follow and stick with that system.
Because if you don't, then you end up with a material and a tag that ends up being inaccurate. And so this is why we're using the generic tag versus the actual built-in material tag.
