material templates, colors, and Geomagic design

[JST]

I am fairly new with Keyshot, but I am so far able to get what I want reasonably well.  I am by no means expert at doing renderings.  I am still using the stock materials in teh library, not editing them.

My input CAD program is Geomagic Design (formerly called Alibre), which I will call GD for short.   My version of Keyshot came bundled WITH the latest updated version of GD, as a package.   Prior to this I was just using the best rendering that the CAD program would do

I am trying to get the material templates in keyshot working in a usable way.  My problem is that GD does not seem to export material names, despite them being assigned, so it defaults to the part name as the "tag". 

Well, as you can guess, part names are often a touchy subject, they may be part numbers, etc, and not able to be changed willy nilly just to satisfy a rendering program.   And there may be a couple hundred distinct parts.  So I start off with an "issue" here.

So far I have had to assign the parts individually, and that is what I have done, due to there being different part names, and no material names.  There being a lot of parts, I have been trying to test out the system before committing to any particular action on all 200+ parts in each of the existing models that need to be rendered.

I ran into a question that I don't know how to answer.  GD outputs part colors, and in general Keyshot takes those in and renders the part in that color just fine.  Just fine as long as no properties are assigned, that is.   

If there are several identical parts, and not all are the same color, even though they have the same geometry etc, they all get the same part name in GD.  Color is apparently just a property of the part instance.  So if one is painted red, and another blue, the part name is not necessarily different, because the metal etc is not different, just the paint.  of course if the part name is a part number, this is no issue because red and blue would have different part numbers, but in many cases the name is just a name and not a P/N.

Again, that works fine when it comes over to keyshot so long as no properties are applied.  But NOT so fine as soon as a surface texture etc is applied.

So what happens with a part name that has had any properties applied is that Keyshot takes all the parts of that same name, and assigns the same color to them, over-riding the color that comes in with the part.  After all, they all have the same name, and Keyshot applies the same treatment.  The various materials in the Keyshot library have shiny red different from shiny blue, etc, so when you drag the thing onto a part, you need to select the surface type AND also within that type, the color.  And that is what gets put on all parts of one name, regardless of what color they were sent over as.   

An example is a kitchen model.  One may want to have the same type trim pieces on one wall a different color than those on another wall, if the walls are different colors.  But doorways are the same, and so are the part names for the trim since they are the same size. 

Or, to jazz it up, one might want to show a stack of Fiesta ware plates on a shelf...  they are the same plate, but all different colors, red, blue, green , yellow, aqua, etc.

My question is whether there is a way for Keyshot to apply the same texture, etc, but NOT the same color, to all parts of the same name.   Can instances of a part have different colors, AND have the surface texture etc come in via a material template, without having to create a separate name for the blue one and the red one?

I would like for Keyshot to still use the color that comes in with the part, but use the surface texture etc that I apply in Keyshot.

It seems that it might be possible, because Keyshot uses the incoming color if NO properties are used.  But I don't know how to do it in case properties ARE applied.

Do I really have to have a different name for each different COLOR part of the same exact type, even though color is sent to Keyshot with the part?