Applying a material to an object in the model is a simple drag and drop operation, as shown in the following step-by-step example:

1. Open the Materials Browser, click on the material name, and drag it to the desired object.
2. Release the mouse button to apply the material:

An alternative method to apply materials is to associate the materials with layers. This will automatically apply the material to all objects in that layer that have their material property set to By Layer.

To assign a material to a layer, click on the Attach By Layer button found in the Materials panel on the Visualize tab in both the 3D Modeling and the 3D Basics workspaces. The location of the Attach By Layer button in the 3D Modeling workspace is shown in the following screenshot:

Clicking on the Attach by Layer button will open the Materials Attachment Options window. This window is divided vertically. On the left, you have a list of the materials that were used in the model, and on the right, you have a list of all the layers present in the model. To assign a material to a layer, simply click on the material name, drag it, and then drop it on the desired layer name. If you have a material attached to a layer and you want to return to the default Global material, click on the big X sign that will appear near the layers that have material attachments, as shown in the following screenshot:

Now that we have selected the material and applied it to the object, the next thing to look at is how the material's texture map will be wrapped around the 3D object. This can be controlled by using the Material Mapping options. The details of using the Material Mapping options are shown in the next section.