I discovered today that I was not able to open the Revit® Material Browser (on the Manage ribbon tab, on the Settings panel, selecting the Materials tool). As luck would have it, I am quite a bit behind in reading the Autodesk Revit Architecture Forum, and I just happened to have read a thread about this issue earlier today. In the Materials Dialog Box Doesn’t work thread, a post by richard.horner, building off the previous post by stewart.jex, provided the solution that worked for me. I know I will not be able to find that thread when I need it in the future, and since the solution is not at all intuitive (I still cannot figure out why it works), I decided to document it here.
- In the Revit session in which you discover that the Material Browser will not open, go to the Application Menu (File “tab”), and choose Options.
- In the Options dialog, choose Hardware on the left side.
- On the right side, in the Hardware setup area, clear the checkmark from the Use hardware acceleration…