2013 Materials editor

[karthur1]

When I imported my materials, some of them came in as a "Misc" category.  Can someone tell me how to edit the category for each material?  I would like to get these into the Metal/Steel category.

This new materials/apperance editor is going to take some getting use to.  Its pretty confusing for me right now.

[Maxim-CADman77]

I swear I've already saw that line "BgEBA..." insted of material during my short CADmanager's life!

That was the case 05600193. The root of problem was - being unstisfied with Inventor's Style Editor we edited the material.XML with third part software. That software apart from changing what it was asked to change was chnging just one character (space instead of cariage return or vise versa don't remember exactly).

You probably think we stopped to use 3rd party software for editing XML? NO!!

After that we've started to use XML editor that haven't changed anything apart what user asked it to change.

Our fault? Maybe but, Autodesk, we are not happy with those limited tools you provide us with....

Look at the topic begining. Topicstarter marked this as "solved" but what is a solution for imported materials being placed into "Misc" category?

"Cache it to IPT, remove from library, add it from IPT to library with no category choosen and repeat procedure for the rest half thousand materials"?

Blah! Should be the shorter method.

[freesbee]

known

In Inventor 2012 (and previous) materials.xml must have a carriage return ( 
 ) between the internal style name and the closing quotes of the internal style name. If that is missing some strange events happen (i.e.. failure in refreshing standard components).

Our 2012 materials.xml was working perfectly (if you take a look at page 6 of this post, where discussing "illegal characters", you'll see a chunk of our 2012 materials.xml ), so that's not the case...

...but I agree with you: the power you can have editing manually xml styles cannot be achieved with autodesk tools. You just need to know quite well the styles hierarchy, and you also need to know how to test it. That's why I liked the xml more than the adsklib...

[trumpy81]

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@Triebschuetz.frison wrote:

the issue has:

- nothing to do with Vault (we do not have any Vault)

- nothing to do with how people access it (it happens also in local environment)

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I wasn't sure if you were using vault or not, that can add to the headaches as I am sure you are aware.

If you were using vault or any method other than standard practise to access the files, that may have had an impact on the problem in some way.

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I do not understand what you mean by "structure of inventor installation", but if what you mean is "how has inventor been installed" the answer is: we have several configurations between inventor Std and Pro, being part of PDSp/u or FDSp/u, all of them being installed by deployment. In any case the issue is not depending on this point as well.

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By installation structure I mean any files that are not stored in the original 'as installed' file structure for Inventor. For example, any of the locations under Options/File can be changed to non standard locations along with many other file locations.

My thinking was that if any of the above were true then the migration process may have failed to find the relevant information and simply proceeded, leaving you with missing data.

It seems that I may have misinterpretted your intentions re: 'the story'. In that case, I offer my apologies.

[freesbee]

trumpy,

no need for apologizing.

Chris,

I really think that this implementation of material libraries should have never came to life.

1st

going on with reparation of libraries, I discovered that wherever the parts family was linked to an original autodesk family (even if you suppress the link), with the migration the new template takes over, and the material of the template replaces all material grades of the family.

Good! That can be solved creating absolutely independent families... which is not a big deal with my small amount of standard parts. Nevertheless this has not really much to do with the material libraries, but...

2nd

as you (probably) noticed we have several material grades for each library. In certain cases we use appearances to quickly distinguish parts made of different materials. Example:

our circlips have 2 grades (let's keep it simple): they are available in 1.0601 (called C60 in Germany and most EU countries, 1060 in USA) and 1.4122 (which is X 39 Cr Mo 17 1, a sort of stainless steel only used for making circlips and few other items). Circlips are already very small and tiny items in comparison with assemblies where they are mounted. For this reason we assumed the internal convention of having the 1.0601 circlips "browned", while the 1.4122 circlips are "chrome". In our case this is defined in the material, because our 1.0601 has the appearance "browned", while the 1.4122 has the appearance "chrome".

So what happened: during the creation of our new materials.adsklib (such a nice interface that people went editing xml files, which is not possible any more because there are no more xml to edit!!), our material 1.4122 got by mistake the appearance "gunmetal" which is not that far away from "browned". Thus circlips in 1.4122 that have been created now, got the appearance "gunmetal" instead of chrome. Once corrected the mistake in the materials.adsklib we tried to refresh those standard parts... surprise, surprise: it does not update, because there is already an occurence of "1.4122 gunmetal" in the part, and that will not be replaced. The new appearance will be valid only for circlips that have not been created before.

...and of course I cannot open the part directly to update the material, because you cannot edit standard parts, and Task Scheduler also does not help.

With the 2012 architecture it was enauch to change the name of the appearance in the materials.xml file (less than 10 seconds) and everything was updating automatically.

So, how can I update the materials in standard parts now?

I'm wondering: how can it be possible that I am the only one in trouble with such problems!!! I have the feeling that I am stupid and the rest of the world understood perfectly how it works....

[Maxim-CADman77]

Have you tried placing all yourissued standard parts to one IAM and then replacing them from library with Application Option "Refresh out-of-date standard parts during placement" enabled (Conten Center tab)?

[freesbee]

...yes (again, missing crying smileys).

This application option is "domain controlled" in our environment... I just forgot to mention it in my post!!!

[freesbee]

again something not working: has anybody managed to make a "transparent appearance"?

All the "glass" materials from inventor libraries, with a wonderful transparent vase icon, are nice only in the icon: when you apply the color the get not clear any more.

Then I tried to open an old component that WAS transparent.

This one has an appearance override, and I imagine that I could use that override to create my other glassy styles...

of course not possible: in appearance editor no traces for the glassy override...

Anyone managed to make a glassy (transparent) material in inventor 2013??

It's insane... this is really not acceptable

[mrattray]

The Polycarbonate (Clear) is what I use for transparent parts.

[Maxim-CADman77]

That "BlueCielo" Tab is some 3rd party staff for rendering, right?

Are you sure it doesn't make the "not so good" Inv2013 the "complete disaster"?

Why not unload "everything from 3rd party" during you tricky migration (just in case)?

[freesbee]

...thanks Mike, it worked out.

In principle you always need to make copies of styles present in the Autodesk libraries... thanks God they said that you can migrate old libraries... they are wasting me so much time.

No, the InnoCielo tab has nothing to do the rendering: it's our PDM.

And now back to the original problem: how to update standard parts if the material changed its properties??

[SBix26]

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@Triebschuetz.frison wrote:

And now back to the original problem: how to update standard parts if the material changed its properties??

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Temporarily change to a project that doesn't classify that location as a Content Center Files or Library.  Then those standard parts are editable.  Or, you can temporarily move them to another location in your project, same result.

Sam B
Inventor 2012 Certified Professional

Please click "Accept as Solution" if this response answers your question.
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Inventor Professional 2013 SP1.1 Update 2
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still waiting for a foreshortened radius dimensioning tool in Drawing Manager

[Maxim-CADman77]

What's the line "xxx HZ; yyy parts; zzz triangles" in the bottom of graphic window?

Is it somewhat related to some 3rd pard rendering software?

[ChrisMitchell01]

Hi Massimo,

Sam is correct - if you want to change the material definition for CC parts which have already been instantiated, then they need to reside in a location which is not defined as a read only library in your project.

You can use a different project where the folder in which the CC parts is considered just a normal folder. Or you can use the same project but move the files to a writable folder for the update. To actually do the update, you can either:

1. Create an assembly which uses all the CC parts, then use the Manage, Update in the assembly & check the "Update Styles in all Child Documents", & compare against the appropriate Material library.

2. Alternatively you can use Task Scheduler, Update Design for the folder of CC files. Ensure that the material library you want to update from is defined as the active library in the project file being used.

The inability to directly update the material for the CC parts using the standard mechanism is logged as a defect.

Regarding the question about transparency, some of the appearances only display properly when using the realistic view mode - that may be the issue you were seeing.

To the initial problem of what happened to your migration & definition of the materials in your custom CC library, etc we still need to see how you had all this configured in 2012 so that we can see what went wrong. That most likely won't help you now, but it could help others who may encounter the same problem. Did you send in any data files to Support, etc ? If not you know my email....

Thanks,
Chris

[freesbee]

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@uma wrote:

What's the line "xxx HZ; yyy parts; zzz triangles" in the bottom of graphic window?

Is it somewhat related to some 3rd pard rendering software?

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[HKCU\Software\Autodesk\Inventor\RegistryVersionX.0\System\Preferences\Scene Manager\Debug]
"Post Statistics"=dword:00000001

realtime monitor graphical performances, nothing to do with rendering

(careful: substitute "X" with your proper release, 17 for 2013, so far working on all versions since Inventor 9)

[freesbee]

---

@uma wrote:

What's the line "xxx HZ; yyy parts; zzz triangles" in the bottom of graphic window?

Is it somewhat related to some 3rd pard rendering software?

---

[HKCU\Software\Autodesk\Inventor\RegistryVersionX.0\System\Preferences\Scene Manager\Debug]
"Post Statistics"=dword:00000001

realtime monitor graphical performances, nothing to do with rendering

(careful: substitute "X" with your proper release, 17 for 2013, so far working on all versions since Inventor 9)