# Material Profiles

## Create a Material Profile Library

You can create a material profile library to use within your project. You may have a number of standard profile shapes that are described in an excel file or a other text file in which you would like to use or convert into your .ifc project.

Grasshopper is typically a good way to generate these profile libraries which can then be imported into other programs for typical use. Also, in this case to be able to be selected from within the standard GeometryGym Catalogue rather than having to regenerate. The following steps outline how to generate a user defined .ifc profile library in Grasshopper.

1. First generate the profiles in which you would like to include in the library. You can either define these by the provided components for creating standard shapes (i.e. I Shape profile) or by generating a Profile Def from a referenced polyline curve.
2. In the image below we have generated a series of Polygons and generated a list of IfcProfileDefs using the **ggIFC Profile Def** component.
3. In order to store the profiles correctly we need to reference them to a defined Library Reference. We will define two library references using the **ggIFC LibraryReference** component. We call the first reference *myShapes* and the second *Samplesections.* This will allow us to nest the profiles in groups encase we want to add additional groups of profiles to this library in the future.
4. Assign the list of profiles to the Library Reference by creating an reference relationship between the profiles and the library reference using the **ggIFC ExternalReferenceRelationship** component.
5. Then assign the myShapes profiles to the upper level library using another **ggIFC ExternalReferenceRelationship**.

![Creating a user Profile Library](/files/gFDBjwAjrX9iUEnetprD)

Once the profiles have been defined within the library you can use the **ggIFC BakeToFile** component to bake the library to your computer. In order to access the profiles within the catologue component the file must be save to the following folder: C:\Users\\\[*User*]\AppData\Roaming\GeometryGym\UserProfiles

{% hint style="warning" %}
You may need to create the UserProfiles folder in the directory first prior to baking.
{% endhint %}

Once the profile file is saved in the correct location close Rhino and Grasshopper and reopen. The sections should now be available both within the **ggIFC CatalogueProfileDef** and **ggCatalogueProfile** (BullAnt) components.

![Viewing User Defined Profile Catalogue](/files/rP3T47h6tjOb7nifkZCz)


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