I have attached the drawing by “layer, blocks as Node Hierachy”
how do i assign a material to one object and not the whole layer.

need all the help you can get.

Who said this??

Yea

Most of my Teachers.

Clive

Tyan Tempest I 5400 motherboard, 48GB Ram, 2No Duad core Xeon
OS XP 64
Just upgraded to Max 2010

Right click the object | Object Properties | By Layer (buttons) so they say “by Object”.
To do that for all objects in the layer, use the Layer Manager (select the layer, right-click, object properties).

If the objects are Instances, Material Editor | Options | Propagate Materials to Instances (turn it off).

If you can post the scene (zipped) it would help.

Max 4.2 through 2012 (SP2+SAP).
XP-64 (SP2)
NVidia 9800GTX-512 (Driver 266.58).
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.