# Why is it so difficult to get colors to show up?

**URL:** <https://forums.buildingsmart.org/t/why-is-it-so-difficult-to-get-colors-to-show-up/2312>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [January 25, 2020, 2:23am UTC](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/t/why-is-it-so-difficult-to-get-colors-to-show-up/2312 "2020-01-25T02:23:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 31

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**Author:** ![Moult](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forums.buildingsmart.org/moult/32/196_2.png) [@Moult](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/u/Moult)\
**Post date:** [January 31, 2020, 12:31am UTC](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/t/why-is-it-so-difficult-to-get-colors-to-show-up/2312/31 "2020-01-31T00:31:53Z")

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@angel.velez - The below screenshot shows a file created with the [BlenderBIM Add-on](https://blenderbim.org) which has two cubes, with one cube assigned a colour by shape, and another cube assigned another colour by material. Both use `IfcSurfaceStyleRendering`.

The screenshot shows colours displaying when an IFC is opened as a regular file.

![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/buildingsmart1/original/2X/a/a4ef6a52a6f752ba0e60c3ebc0b282bb78821b3c.png)

The screenshot shows colours displaying when an IFC is linked into a Revit model.

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/buildingsmart1/original/2X/7/71633e1c07a8d5a4c6b76fb155f1b5f3d2527412.png)

The sample file is here: [revit-color.ifc](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/uploads/short-url/2V3htcfI3guGqYlNxssaLQ7ZgIH.ifc) (8.4 KB)

As you can see, Revit _does_ support both colour assignment techniques, as well as the `IfcSurfaceStyleRendering`, however, there are [caveats](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/t/where-and-how-will-my-colors-be-saved-in-ifc/1806/33).

There are two ways to assign colour: by material and by shape, as shown in [CV-2x3-131](https://standards.buildingsmart.org/documents/Implementation/IFC_Implementation_Agreements/CV-2x3-131.html) and [the documentation](https://standards.buildingsmart.org/IFC/RELEASE/IFC4/ADD2_TC1/HTML/figures/ifcstyleditem_fig-1.png).

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