A railing consists of a number of components whose display properties can be determined by the materials assigned to each component. You assign one material to each physical component of the railing. For example, you assign a wood material to the balusters of a railing and a stainless steel material to the handrail and bottomrail. You assign materials to components in each display representation where you want the materials to be used.
If you want to use the display properties of the railing style, instead of using material display properties, you can turn off the material assignments in the display properties of the railing style.
Material definitions consist of display components that correspond to component types of objects. For example, the Linework component of a material is used for all linework in plan view. The Surface Hatch component of a material is used to hatch all object surfaces in three dimensional (3D) model views and in elevations.