Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

For what it's worth, this is how color and material styles have worked since they appeared in the product (version 9, was it?): you create/edit them in a file, then save to a library, then perhaps purge from the file to keep it clean.  The only thing you can actually do in the library itself is migrate and delete.

I haven't yet really dived into the Appearances, yet, but I'm rather dreading it.  From what I've seen, the editor is anything but intuitive.

[#2]

You are correct Sam - the colors/materials were always edited in-file. The difference now (and it is a huge issue IMHO) is the default library and location are specified via the project file which locks it for editing. We have ours Vaulted and it is giving us stress (A lot of stress).

When I need to change/add a material, I need to shut down IV; check out the library; restart inventor; make my change; shut down IV; check the library in; restart IV; tell all of my employees to stop what they are doing; shut down; get latest on the library; restart IV and get back to work.

[#3]

I acually just stumbled upon this. Materials cannot be added anymore due to the material file being read by another computer.

Because the first Inventor started holds read-access to the material file (which is placed in a network share together with the rest of the style library)..

Really...

This will become a major pain factor, making editing/adding materials virtually impossible unless I'm the first one to show up at the office in the morning.

-This must surely be a bug to be quickly fixed in a hotfix?? 

-Any good known workarounds?

[#4]

I have.this problem with the default.ivb file. It lives in a shared network folder and the first person in in the morning gets read/write (very rarely is that me). I ended up setting it to read only. It's fine except if I want to make a change I have to shut down my IV, set it to not read only, restart IV, make my changes, shut down IV, check it read only and then restart IV again. Still, it's better then trying to figure out who in the office has the magic key and convincing them to stop working so I can make a tweek to a macro.

[#5]

I remember a magic button it was called Read-Write styles library, if it isn’t broke don’t fix it  

[#6]

Maybe a standalone project editor is required; it would certainly be handy for setting up and managing a library. I have just been re-setting image maps that have lost their links, it’s not a very efficient method to many steps required. Of course it doesn’t preview the image/colour still in the drop down menu (Update 1 included)

[#7]

I agree with you entirely Rob. Personally I think this "improvement" to the materials editor is anything but, at worst it's a disaster, at best it's ill conceived. I have both 2012 & 2013 and frankly I am shying away from using the latest software purely because of the changes to the materials editor, it really cramps my style.

Regards.

Dave

Mechatronics Design Ltd

[#8]

There's trying and there's failing miserably, yes I think we would have been better of skipping this upgrade completely they normally add enough new features to make the upgrade worthwhile but I can't see of anything productive to the workflow, on the contrary unfortunately. No point in making a common material library, all our materials and colours are customised RAL/Pantone/Laminates this needs to be shared within our group. I am using the materials editor on my c: drive now, I then just sync with other users at the end of the day. Theoretically it should make the appearance browser a bit quicker although mine just runs crashes, I then have to load up again. The main reason for getting a SSD was to reduce the time it took to reload Inventor after it crashed. Kind regards Robert Beckley Development Designer | Sloane

[#9]

Hi Rob,

Unfortunately I can't quite agree with you that 2013 isn't a worthwhile upgrade as it has quite a few new features that could be very useful. I have not taken advantage of them myself due to the materials editing issue, which I find frustrating to say the least.

It would have been nice, if like some previous releases of Inventor, it had been left  to the end user to decide if they implimented the new version or continued to use the old. I think that most experienced users would have opted for the latter.

In truth this attempt to consolidate material types across Autodesk products appears to be a very half-hearted affair. It actually does little to provide a common library because it is not aimed at all Autodesk products, take Publisher for example - a product directly linked to Inventor.

I really liked the old way of working with materials and found it easy to achieve what I wanted quickly. Sure, it could be improved upon, and with a greater selection of material types available, but at least it worked quite well.

Like you Rob, I have the need to create and re-use many Pantone colours and non-standard materials types.

Now I find the whole custom materials process to be tortuous. Autodesk have dropped the ball on this one. I doubt that I will switch over to Inventor 2013 full time until this issue has been resolved. It might even mean delaying upgrading until 2014 appears.It's that serious an issue for me.

Regards.& best wishes to all.

Dave

Mechatronics Design Ltd.

[#10]

I also agree with everything that has been said in this thread.  I have a particular problem with the sheer amount of absolutely useless textures that are now available in Inventor... a product aimed at the manufacturing industry and heavily used in Oil & Gas etc, shouldn't be loaded up to the teeth with textures of mosaic tiles, cherry stained wood, floral yellow wallpaper?!?! It's utterly useless and serves no purpose other than bogging Inventor down even further.  What's that you say? We now have a consistent texture library across all Autodesk products? Well here's a thought, how many engineering staff working on Inventor will EVER exchange a model with someone using the likes of Revit? Never, in all my years of working in the Autodesk channel, in industry, never.  What's that? But it'll help translate models into the likes of 3DS Max? How about no, how about forgetting about pretty pictures and work on the fact that constraints from Inventor do not translate into 3DS Max, leading to people spending hours recreating them for an animation! 

I'm in a bad mood as I'm trying to make a material in our 'new' materials library and the whole thing is winding me up.  Like why is there so many fields now for a material? They aren't displayed anywhere other than in the **** editor.  Why is there a Revit Annotation Information area in the Inventor material editor?! Why when I edit a MATERIAL, do I get the full range of texture editing options? Why do I have to create the material in the document, then add it back to the library? Why do materials sometimes accept a category assignment then randomly some don't? 

Anyway, rant over.  Honestly Autodesk, employ someone who knows what the customers want, or more importantly, need.  

Someone above said that 2013 was a worthwhile upgrade.... mmm I beg to differ, looking through the what's new of Inventor 2013, I'm struggling to find anything worth the hassle.  The only reason I brought my company up to 2013 was to utilise the improvements in the full SQL multi-site replication ownership management as we have remote sites that stuggled with 2012.  It pays to stay up to date, but I wouldn't say it was a wholly positive move.

Neil Cross.