It is possible to view, specify, and text-edit information pertaining to the material type and color of various parts of the model tree. This is an interim capability intended to provide enough material properties information for current rendering and analysis purposes until the design of a full material properties database can be finalized.
In addition to a variety of usual database manipulation and status commands, there are commands to compare the current database for name overlap (conflicts) with another database, as well as commands to import and export subtrees to/from the current database. If name conflicts between the two databases do exist, there are commands to rename an individual node without changing any of the references to it (``mv''), or to rename a node and change all the references to it (``mvall''). Another command which is useful for preparing to move subtrees between databases is the ``push'' command, which adjusts the transformation matrices from the indicated point down to the leaves of the directed acyclic graph, leaving the higher level arcs with identity matrices.