Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

Good afternoon everyone

I ran into problems creating shaded views in drawings for our catalogue with Inventor 2013.I'm not sure if the problem is specific to the 2013 version or it's a limitation of inventor itself as I never had to play with the lighting of shaded views in the past.

I have some drawings where details are lost in the shadows because the lighting comes from the wrong side.

After doing some research, it seems that the .idw file will retain the default lighting of the first assembly or part that is inserted in it. Problem is, Even when I try to create a NEW drawing using the default templates installed with Inventor (rather than our customized defaults) it still won't use the new lighting position.

Here's an example of the original lighting in image one.

Here's the original result on the .idw

I tried to modify the lighting in the assembly to make it this way but the .idw remains unchanged.

For smaller and simpler assemblies, I can easily rotate the parts themselves for the default lighting to work but on many others it is impossible. Here's an example of expected results

Thank you

[#2]

I'm not aware of a way to edit the Lighting Styles of a drawing like you can on the model files. As you know now, changing the lighting in the model files has no effect in how the lighting behaves in the drawings.

The only trick I know of is to disable the specular lighting for drawings. It's a registry edit and you can read on it here http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com/2011/02/disable-reflections-and-gradients-in.html

Based on your sample images of the geomtry I'm not sure how much that might help (or hurt) you in terms of how the views are represented.

[#3]

Thanks but I already tried to disable specular lighting and it didn't solve my problem

I'm not trying to "edit" the lighting of an existing drawing. That is impossible. What I'm trying to do is to have inventor use the "default" lighting parameters of the part when creating a "new" drawing. It seems inventor is fetching a different default lighting rather than using  the "default lighing" of the first inserted part (as it used to do in previous versions from what I understand)

Also, given the simplicity of the assembly in my example the lighting orientation is quite irrelevant. It was meant to illustrate the different options I have already tried more than to  illustrate the problem itself. In more complicated assemblies it becomes a problem but I'm not at liberty to share more sensitive cad models.

I guess that my only solution will be to work with the overal brighness and contrast of the printer to try and show the missing detail as best as possible.

[#4]

Oops, I just realized I wasn't clear in the OP. When creating a new .idw file, the lighting of the shaded views remains the same regardless of the active lighting or the default lighting in the first inserted part. It can't be impossible to match the lighing when creating a new drawing can it ??