You can copy and paste materials between drawings. In addition to the steps below, you can also select a material and use the Windows shortcut keys (Ctrl+A to select all, Ctrl+X to cut, Ctrl+C to copy, Ctrl+V to paste) to copy it in the Explorer. You can use these shortcut keys with all other Explorer elements as well.
To copy a material from one drawing to another
1 Do one of the following to choose Explore Materials (
):
• On the ribbon, choose Tools > Materials (in Explorer).
• On the menu, choose Tools > Explorer > Explore Materials.
• On the Format toolbar, click the Explore Materials tool.
• Type expmaterials and then press Enter.
2 Right-click the material you want to copy.
3 From the shortcut menu, select Copy.
4 If necessary, click Show as Dialog (
) to display Material Explorer as a dialog box instead of a pane. (Panes display information about the current drawing only.)
5 On the left, select the drawing to which you want to copy the material.
6 Click the Materials element for that drawing.
7 On the right, right-click, and then from the shortcut menu, select Paste.
Each drawing contains a material named Global.
You cannot delete or rename this material.