Copy within and between your Project Library and an External Library

Your Project Library includes the materials, material sets, site improvements, and material processes that you can use in various commands in your project. You can copy these items into any external library as well. The External Library (.mxl) is a file that includes the same types of items as your project library, and you can also copy items from the external to the project library. Only one external library appears in the Material and Site Improvement Library at a time, but you can create as many as you want and then load just the one you need for your open project.

Note: When you create a new external library (File > New External Library) it starts empty and is automatacilly loaded into the Material and Site Improvement Manager.

When to copy and edit materials and site improvements

When you want the changes to be globally available in future projects, edit materials, sets, site improvements, and processes in the External Library before you copy them into your Project Library.
When you want materials, sets, site improvements, and processes to be available only in your current project, edit them there or copy them from the external library into your project library before you edit them.

Selecting categories and items

You can multi-select items in a library to move/copy them to a different category or the other project. This saves you from having to recreate existing categories and items manually. When you select more than one item, the Properties pane on the right will be blank, signifying that multiple property changes are not supported.

You can select single or multiple materials or site improvements (or categories of either) to perform various actions. Multi-select by pressing Control or Shift while clicking items. If a category (such as Earthen) is selected, then all items within that category will be selected for the action you choose. You can perform these actions on any selected categorys or items:

Copy From Library - Inserts the category or items from one library (either project or external) into the other library.
Rename - Allows you to change the unique identifier for a category or items.
Delete - Permanently removes the category or items from just the library thet are selected in.
Move - Enables you to move the seletced category or items to a new category in the other library. If any the category or items are not compatible with the target category in the other library, the category is not available in the Move Categories dialog.

Copying/moving items between or within Project and External Libraries

Note: You can only move materials and site improvement between categories with compatible properties. For example, generic materials and Earthen materials have different properties, so a material definition cannot be moved between them.

If you copy/move items from the external library to the project library, these apply:

If the external library category that you are copying/moving from already exists in the project library, the copied/moved item is placed in the existing category.
If an item of the same name already exists in that category, the copied/moved items name is given a numbered suffix, e.g.., Concrete (1).
For user-defined categories, if the category you are copying/moving from does not exist in the project library, both the category and the material are copied/moved.
If the material set or material process that you are copying/moving to the project library refers to materials that do not exist in the project library, a message displays giving you the option to copy/move these materials to the project library. If you select No, the material set or material process is not copied/moved.

Ways to access:

Select one or more categories or items in your Project Library or the External Library and:

Right-click and select Copy to Library, Rename, Delete, or Move in the context menu.
Select Edit > Copy to Library, Delete, or Move in the menu.
Click the Copy to Library, Delete, or Move icon on the toolbar.
To move, drag-and-drop to a compatible category.