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Inventor colour to AutoCAD colour

5 REPLIES 5
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Message 1 of 6
pcrawley
1625 Views, 5 Replies

Inventor colour to AutoCAD colour

Just wondering if anyone knows a simple solution to this problem:

 

I have created an assembly in Inventor 2012 - and created colours in the styles library that map to the AutoCAD colour index (ACI).  So - for example, a part with colour style "1" appears red.

 

Save the assembly as an AutoCAD DWG - open it in AutoCAD 2012 - and not only are all the parts white (Layer 0, colour by layer), but the visualisation material is always "Generic".  I realise this visualisation style comes from the "realistic" material style shared by all Autodesk products and can't be edited in 2012... But all I want is to be able to colour parts in an assembly - and have those colours appear in the AutoCAD model.

 

There are very good reasons why the colour has to flow in this way (Inventor >>> AutoCAD) - but they are not really relevant here.

 

Anyone got any suggestions?  I thought it would be easy - and I'm hoping to be proved right 😉

 

Peter
5 REPLIES 5
Message 2 of 6
PaulMunford
in reply to: pcrawley


@pcrawley wrote:

 

There are very good reasons why the colour has to flow in this way (Inventor >>> AutoCAD) - but they are not really relevant here.

  



Oh - go on, tell us! I  really can't think why this should be necessary 🙂

 


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Message 3 of 6
PACDrafting
in reply to: pcrawley

Paul

It is necessary if you use the Autocad environment as your main system.

E.g if some items are modelled in inventor and some items are modelled using say Bentley prosteel that sits on Autocad. There is usually a color scheme setup in Autocad so yes it is relevant.

I have to agree here. There needs to be an option to use the material colors when exporting to Autocad. (At present you need to continuously open the autocad file once inventor file has been exported to fix the model colors). And therefore the material color will be as the inventor color is and assigned to a layer name or layer number.
Message 4 of 6
pcrawley
in reply to: pcrawley

Ok. There is a way, but it's a real cludge and isn't quite what I want - but it'll have to do. It may work for others.

In Inventors part template I created a bunch of colour styles. Each style was named 1, 2, 3, 4 etc - to represent the AutoCAD Colour Index (ACI). I changed the diffused and ambient colours to match the ACI (now it looks right!). Now the important bit - remove the tick from the "Realistic" material colour. If you don't remove this, the realistic colour style goes with the part to AutoCAD. (Anyone want a tool for calculating the RGB colours from an ACI? I now have one to share if you want it!)

Next I created the corresponding Materials (the physical materials) - also numbered according to the ACI. For their colour style, I picked the corresponding colour style created above. As a final step, I saved all these material and colour styles

Now I can place lots of parts in an assembly - use the View rep to "remove colour overrides" (not sure why this step is necessary, but it is!) - export to AutoCAD - shade the view and bingo!!

Conclusion: There HAS to be an easier way.

(And the reason: All downstream consumers of this data are AutoCAD users, so it has to "look" right since AutoCAD doesn't retain iProperties or support BOM's.)


Peter
Message 5 of 6
trumpy81
in reply to: pcrawley

Sounds like you need to convince a few users to switch to Inventor ... lol

 

If it's any consolation, I don't think this process will be any easier in 2013 either. In fact, 2013 may be a little more difficult, so hang onto that program of yours for a while ... lol

Regards
Andy M
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Message 6 of 6
scottmoyse
in reply to: trumpy81

I agree Peter, what are you playing at? get them on to Inventor 🙂 They prob aren't part of the basic PDS suite either are they?

 

Wouldn't it be easier to export as a SAT file from Inventor then import into AutoCAD? from 2013 onwards the colours are maintained... assuming the Inventor users will migrate to 2013 this should be a better alternative?


Scott Moyse
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