2014 Material / Apperance Library

[matt_jlt]

Can anyone tell me why, in the new Materials Library, every material has to have it's own unique material name, appearance name physical properties name? Is there a way to be able to have just one appearance type and set 20 materials to point to that instead of defining a new one for every material. Also, the physical properties, why am I defining a unique name for each physical property? Is there a way to re-use this aswell? If not, I don't see the point in even having a name for the physical properties.

I was hoping to be able to define approximately 20 different types of mild steel, have only one appearance type (as they will all look the same) and only one physical property (as they are pretty similar and I won't be doing any FEA using these properties anyway).

Currently I have to have 20 materials, 20 appearances and 20 unique names for the physical properties aswell. It seems like a lot of unnecessary work.

Can someone please clear this up for me?

Thanks, Matt.

[blair]

Material are materials, and apperance is appearance.

You can have a Mild Steel with the appearance of Copper or Chome or Red.

Nothing stopping you from adding really 20 different materials with the same appearance

Materials contain the physical properties, Density and properties for FEA. Appearace is just that, color/finnish.

You can add a number of custom mild steel, one with the default Grey, another Red, Blue and so on or have them all the same default Grey.

[matt_jlt]

I know what they are all for, and understand that i can have multiple visual styles that are exactly the same, but it seems pointless in have 20 different visual styles that are displaying the exact same thing.

I would like to know if there is a way to have my materials pointing to one single visual style. Not just have them all look the same? If so, how can I achieve this, as I havn't been able to work it out.

Thanks, Matt.

I'm using Inventor 2014 Pro / Win 7

[mcgyvr · Accepted solution]

Matt, Autodesk didn't make it as easy/intuitive as they should have. See the second video here http://designandmotion.net/autodesk/inventor-creating-custom-materials-libraries-in-2014/ Its all about pressing the double arrow icon next to the appearance tab then selecting the appearance there.

[mcgyvr]

wow even this message board is screwed up..I can't edit my post.. oh well I was just going to say.. "Time to start over"

[matt_jlt]

Thanks, worked like a charm.

I saw the arrows before and just assumed it was text / for moving the tabs around. Would never have guessed that's where they were keeping the replace button hidden, I looked all over for that 😉 I couldn't even find any documentation on it.

thanks again, Matt.