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Introduction

You can find all the images used through your library materials in one convenient location. This allows for quickly finding an image to reuse when creating a new material, or reviewing what images are available across your library. To represent real-world objects, Revit materials frequently rely on linked files, or image maps. One such image map might be a photo of bricks or concrete, which will be displayed on the surface of a wall to which the material is assigned. As well as defining the base appearance of the material, image maps can be used for various visual properties such as bumpiness, relief or roughness.

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Image Map Management

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The Problem

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Image Maps from Local Drive

When a material is created, any image maps it uses must be linked from a specific folder. In order for the material to render correctly, anyone opening the model must have access to the folder paths its image maps are saved in. This commonly causes issues when multiple users work on a model. If the creator of the material links an image map from their local drive, renderings will look correct to them but not for anyone else.

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The Solution

Kinship can automatically manage image map paths to ensure materials render correctly for all users. With Kinship’s option to manage these automatically, the materials will be managed seamlessly across your team.
This feature needs to be enabled. Administrators must ensure the Manage Image Maps setting is turned on in the Kinship account settings. When enabled, images within materials are stored on servers located in the UK.
For material creators: Simply add image files to a material from any folder (local or network). When the material is added to the library or the model is synced, Kinship will sync any image maps and ensure anyone who uses the material or model can render the material correctly. For administrators: In order to enable Kinship to manage image maps, you must ensure the Manage Image Maps setting is turned on in the Kinship account settings. The images used in Revit’s out-of-the-box materials are sourced from a folder created at the time of Revit’s installation. These images will render correctly as a model is being worked on by different people in your team, or even external collaborators since out-of-the-box materials will be taken care of by Kinship.

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How It Works

Kinship places all materials’ images in a cache folder and points all references to that folder, avoiding the path access issues previously explained. To ensure correct rendering, Kinship saves the required image maps in a local folder: C:\ProgramData\Kinship\Materials

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Viewing Image Maps

Image maps can be viewed in two formats:

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Individual Material Page

On each material’s item page, image maps are displayed in the All Files section. This shows all image maps used in that specific material’s appearance asset, allowing you to see what images are associated with a particular material.

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Learn more

Material Item Page

Learn about the rich information provided for each material and how to use it to inform selection and comparison.

Materials Utilities and Resources

Explore utilities and resources that help you stay on top of your library, including recent activity and related assets.

Materials Overview

Understand how to use Kinship to build, organize and search within your library of Revit materials.