Automatically Assigning Materials to Objects

Here are two options for automatically assigning materials to objects.

Option 1

In the Scenegraph, if you see green nodes like in the image below, this means there is still the link to the original CAT. You can re-import these using the RMB context menu and selecting Reference > (Re)Import Source > Selected for each node, if you have overwritten your CAD file and haven't changed the location.

In the Re-import Options section of the Re-import File dialog, for the Materials option, select Preserve from Scene. This tries to re-assign the material to the geometry, depending on how much your new model differs from the original import. It works quite well, if you have made only geometry changes. However, if your new import has new parts or differs a lot due to changes made inside VRED, such as geometry splitting, then this obviously doesn´t work.

Option 2

Create a VRED asset material library where the materials have the same naming convention as the ones from your CAD import. In the Asset Manager, you have the option to assign materials by name by RMB-clicking the material and selecting Apply To Scene by Name. This replaces the material in your scene with the ones from the Asset Manager. You can also set the Apply Material from Asset Manager option found in the Global Scene Options in the Import dialog when importing your model.