Issue Importing from Inventor - Surface appearances not showing up

[eruduredhel]

I have an Inventor assembly with several very detailed parts. Each part has multiple appearances tied to different surfaces. When I import any of the simpler pieces into showcase, they show up fine with all the textures applied to the correct surfaces. However, when I try to import the more detailed parts, they are showing up as one object/material with the appearance of whatever material was asigned as the default for the inventor part file. I could just go through and separate out the different surfaces and re-apply textures. But this is a very complex and detailed model and it would take days of constant work to fix it by hand.

Is there an easier fix for this?

[cikho]

i'm not used to the inventor workflow, but maybe you forgot some trick in the original inventor files..
using layer or something else for example..

i use aliasstudio, and for example objects having same layer, same material and "touching" (being in g0 continuity) always converts to a single objects..

maybe somehow it works in a similar way for inventor.. but you'd better wait for people used to it..

[Christian_Garimberti]

Inventor and showcase version?

Normally showcase retain all the inventor appearances, matching autodesk appearances and converting inventor materials colors.

Sometimes, importing from inventor, in showcase you have 2 superimposed surfaces for each surface. Specially if you use surface in inventor that after are converted to bodies. Also if in inventor you use derived parts, you can have two surfaces superimposed.

Try to check in inventor first if you have active surfaces on your model.

Or try to check in Showcase organizer if you find the 2 sufaces.

Could you post the inventor model and your showcase scene to test it?

With the dataset i'll be more precise.

Bye

[eruduredhel]

cikho: I don't think the issue is what you described. In fact, no surface on the Inventor model actually has the appearance of the default material that is assigned to the overall part (I attached different textures to every surface). The problem is that none of these appearances I assigned are showing up when importing into Showcase, so it seems that Showcase is just applying the appearance of the default material of the part to all the surfaces, which in turn is causing it to all be considered a single object. So I feel like once I can get Showcase to recognize the appearances applied in the Inventor file, the single-object problem will disappear as well.

c.garimberti: I'm using the 2015 versions for both. Unfortunately, I can't post the model or the scene because of the nature of the project, but I'll try to look into your suggestions whenever I can get time. This actually sounds like it could be the cause of the issue I'm having. However, I'm not entirely sure how to check for active surfaces in Inventor or superimposed surfaces in Showcase, but I'll probably be able to find any additional information I need with a bit of googling, thanks for the help though and I'll post again if I figure out anything.

[eruduredhel]

Ok, so I've checked the Showcase organizer and there are not two surfaces so I don't believe there are any superimposed surfaces. I also looked through Inventor and couldn't find any active surfaces, so I do not believe that is the issue either. Any other ideas?

One of the Inventor part models I'm looking at has ~200 extrusions, 32 revolutions, 57 fillets, 45 sweeps, 65 chamfers, 29 mirrors, 36 circular patterns, etc. And I believe I have ~40 different appearances I've assigned to all the surfaces. Do you think it might just be an issue with the number of surfaces/appearances I'm trying to import? I might try to split the part up into a couple of smaller sections and then importing into Showcase and see if the issue goes away.

[Christian_Garimberti]

You say that colors disappears after importing a second model.

Could you try to import the first model, save the showcase scene, open a new showcase scene and import the second model.

Then, import the second model in the first scene by importing the second scene into the first (not importing direcly the 2 models from inventor into the same scene)

Maybe this change something....

Let me know.

bye

[eruduredhel]

I'm actually having this problem when I attempt to import just the single part(s) by themselves *and* when I try to import multiple parts at the same time. Importing one at a time into different scenes doesn't fix the issue unfortunately. I'm starting to think it might be more cost-effective to just re-apply the textures by hand. In any case, if anyone has any more suggestions for a fix, please let me know.

[Christian_Garimberti]

I think that we need the model to test....

I don't have any other idea.

[eruduredhel]

I still haven't quite figured it out, but I may have some new information that might help diagnose the problem. I began trying to transfer material appearances over from Inventor to Showcase to build a custom library in Showcase. I was doing this by creating single sphere parts in Inventor with each different texture appearance applied to their surfaces and then importing each sphere into Showcase. Most of the surfaces transfered over correctly, but a handful showed up in Showcase as a bright blue surface that no longer had the correct name, but instead its name was a bunch of random numbers (it also lumped all the appearances that failed to import under the same bright blue material). I also noticed, that all of the ones that showed up as bright blue were Inventor Appearances that I tweaked or adjusted in some way (I made duplicates of the original appearance and then edited the duplicates by changinig the scale, or tweaking other appearance properties). Does Showcase not recognize custom material appearances and/or tweaked duplicates of Inventor appearances? In any case, I feel like this might be a clue to figuring out a fix to my original problem.

[gphillips]

Hello, I have a similar issue. When I assign an Appearance in Inventor then Import it to Showcase, the Appearance does not show up. I have an Metal Channel, I assign a Steel, Galvanized appearance to it. I Import it to Showcase and it shows up Gray. When I look at the Materials in Scene, it shows a Steel Galvanized with Checked box but the Appearance is Gray. When click on the Properties of the Steel Galvanized and look at the Image, Source file used it shows the correct file in the folder of Surfaces in Inventor but the Appearance is not being applied to the part. If I click on the Folder icon next to Source File, it takes me to where that file is but it is not choosen. I then have to scroll down and find that file and click on it and choose Open. Once I do that the Appearance is applied to the part, the correct Appearance is displayed in the Sample Image Window box next to the Source: File name.  If the correct file name is already being listed, why do I need to go find the file select it so that it is used. Shouldn't it already be used. Can anyone help?