2014 Stp file exports lose all colours when opened in Altium

[warren_ramsdale]

Is there a known issue with inventor 2014 and STP file exports loosing their colour settings?

We export PCB's and assemblies to Altium PCB CAD tools as step files and have just noticed that the colours don't travel well at the moment! The assemblies just end up light grey/white. I tried an earlier stp export dated 2011 and that opened fine in Altium but not any 2014 exports.

Any clues / workarounds?

[CCarreiras]

Hi!!

Are you colorizing the parts in the part context or in the assembly context?

If you are colouring the parts in assembly context, try to colourize the parts itself and then reset the color override in the assembly and create a new step.

I have also experienced some issues about parts's color in the assembly enviroment. Hope this help.

Regards.

Please mark this response as "Accept as Solution" if it answers your question.

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[warren_ramsdale]

Hi there,

All the parts in the assembly are coloured at part level, normally setting a base colour and then individual faces as needed. I'll try reseting the colours at Assembly level and let you know when I get a moment as I don't want to hassle our PCB layout guys too much.

Cheers 

[JDMather]

What version of STEP are you exporting (click Options when saving).

[Curtis_Waguespack]

Hi warren.ramsdale,

I've seen this with STEP files and Altium when the Solid Bodies are colored. Recall that in a part file you can set the color of the Part, the Solid Body, the Feature, or the Face.

I'm going from memory, but I think that we found that if the bodies had a color set other than As Part, then the colors of individually colored faces didn't translate. But if all the solid bodies were set to As Part, then we could color the faces and the colors translated correctly.

You might test this to see if removing color overrides at the Solid Body level gives different results.

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[warren_ramsdale]

JDM + Curtis,

Thanks, I'll give that a go in the morning, as for which type of step file setting - Both! they both had the same effect.

Cheers

[sten]

Just got a Inventor licenes and am trying to make some basic 3d part models for altium.

I can create the models, but I cannot get the colors to work when I export to STEP and import into Altium.

I found a few postings like this one that describes this to be a know issue, but I am afraid that I don't have enough experience with Inventor to understand to workround described in this post.

I tried to set the Solid Bodies->Solids to "As Part" and then color afterwards using the "Adjust" tool, but it does not work.

Can anyone give a novice a more detailed description of how to do this.

Thanks