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Can't copy local custom material to Inventor Material Library

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Message 1 of 12
jweiss1313
2491 Views, 11 Replies

Can't copy local custom material to Inventor Material Library

When I implemented Inventor Pro 2013 I added all our custom materials to the Inventor Material Library.  This library is not local but on a shared network drive that everyone in my company can access..  You can clearly see that it is not locked and is write enabled.  I dragged the local material to the library and I shows up in the library.  When I close and exit Inventor and re-open, it is no longer available.

 

You can clearly see by my screen capture that the new material was added to the library.  Why isn't is updating the library?

 

I have managed our Inventor styles and libraries for Inventor since 2003 (R5) and I never had as much problems getting my mind to wrap around this new appearances change that Autodesk has made.  I have wasted 4 hours this morning trying to add a simple custom material to my library and I cannot.

 

 

 

Please help!

 

 

John C Weiss Jr.
CAD Manager
Follett LLC.
11 REPLIES 11
Message 2 of 12
blair
in reply to: jweiss1313

this file might help.


Inventor 2020, In-Cad, Simulation Mechanical

Just insert the picture rather than attaching it as a file
Did you find this reply helpful ? If so please use the Accept as Solution or Kudos button below.
Delta Tau Chi ΔΤΧ

Message 3 of 12
SBix26
in reply to: jweiss1313

You are not alone-- migrating and updating a custom M & A library has taken me six months, with constant issues as you describe.  It seems to be working now, but I don't expect that to last...

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 1
Windows XP Pro 32-bit, SP3
HP EliteBook 8730w; 4 GB RAM; Core™ 2 Duo T9400 2.53 GHz; Quadro FX2700M
SpaceExplorer/SpaceNavigator NB, driver 3.7.18
still waiting for a foreshortened radius dimensioning tool in Drawing Manager

Message 4 of 12
jweiss1313
in reply to: SBix26

Thanks for your help gentlemen.  Apparently you need to have everyone out of Inventor so nobody is accessing the material libraries in order for the change to take place.  I waited until everyone went home and added the local material to the Inventor Material Library and now it appear for everyone.

John C Weiss Jr.
CAD Manager
Follett LLC.
Message 5 of 12
mslosar
in reply to: jweiss1313

Glad that works for you but it really isn't an acceptable solution.

 

I can't even COPY the existing library elsewhere to add things to it as simply copying an open library gives an error of it not containing any materials when you try to open it.

 

I shouldn't have to stay 2 hours+ late or get in 2 hours+ early to add a material to the library. Period.

Message 6 of 12
Barry1Lau
in reply to: mslosar

You would think that updating to a new version of Inventor would be easier.  I tried to import my 2012 materials to 2014.  2 days later I said screw it and hand loaded all of the material information only took about 20 minutes.  With MDT, when you clicked the import button on materials at least it took you to the right folder in the new version so that you could see the directroy structure and find the file in the old version.  Inventor (at least 2014) goes to the "C" drive with no other clues.  Also why doesn't the standard library have commonly used materials like tool steels included?  I can't remember the last time I made a part out of gold.

Message 7 of 12
mslosar
in reply to: Barry1Lau

I did get them to survive a reboot Friday - but today, none of what I added Friday is in the main list. They're all just gone.

I did create a new material. Save it in the library.

Then went to the manage tab. On styles section I hit save. It showed the name of material as a new one prompting to save it to the main library. Said, yes, restarted and it was still there.

I thought it worked. Today - gone.
Message 8 of 12
ChrisMitchell01
in reply to: mslosar

John,

 

There were some issues around this in the initial releases of 2013, but to my knowledge all of them have since been resolved. Are you using the latest Service Packs & updates ?

 

I also note from your image that you are writing custom info to the Inventor material library. I would suggest that a better option is to create your own company specific material/apperance library, add that to your project definition & then add your materials/appearances there. If you add to the default Inventor library, then on your next upgrade, your changes could be lost, if you use the as-installed Inventor library, or if you keep your library then  the changes we make would be lost.


Thanks,

Chris



Chris Mitchell
PDMS Customer Engagment Team
Autodesk, Inc.

Message 9 of 12
Barry1Lau
in reply to: ChrisMitchell01

Let's see what happens with the default library open and different options selected:

Create New Library = blank library with no information

Migrate Inventor Styles = browse down thru 10 layers to get to "InventorMaterialsLibrary.adskilb", select it and everything except the create new materials library radio button is greyed out.

Using Windows explorer, copy "InventorMaterialsLibrary.adskilb" from materials folder to another folder, rename the file "ABCMaterialsLibrary.adskilb" and copy it back to materials folder.  Restart Inventor, open materials browser, select open existing library = "failed to open material library"

 

It is amazing how many things don't work in Inventor 2014.

Message 10 of 12
ChrisMitchell01
in reply to: Barry1Lau

Hi Barry,

 

The Migrate command os for migrating legacy (pre-2013) material/color stlyes libraries from the xml format to the new .adsklib format.

 

You cannot simply copy an adsklib file on disk & then try to load it at the same time as the library that it was copied from. If you want to copy the Inventor.adsklib file, then you must first remove the default Inventor library from your project definition.

 

What exactly are you trying to do ?


Thanks

Chris



Chris Mitchell
PDMS Customer Engagment Team
Autodesk, Inc.

Message 11 of 12
Barry1Lau
in reply to: ChrisMitchell01

What exactly am I trying to do? I am trying to migrate my system from Inventor 2012 to Inventor 2014.
Why? Because my CAM software (MasterCAM) saves out its files in 2014 AutoCAD which I cannot open with 2012 AutoCAD because Autodesk has once again changed the file format (for no apparent reason other than planned obsolence).

With Inventor closed, I copied the InventorMaterialsLibrary.adkilb file to another folder, changed the name to LauMaterialslibrary.adkilb and copied it back to the Materials folder in Inventor 2014 design data. Then I went into my project removed InventorMaterials library, add LauMaterials library and made it the active library. Then I saved the project. When I opened a part file and selected the materials browser, it was defaulted to AutoDesk materials library. When I opened LauMaterials library to use it, the message was that the library was empty. So I changed everything back to InventorMaterials library. Interestingly, the styles manager in 2014 only has "lights", 2012 had "lights", "text" and "materials" where you added custom materials.

I will probably screw around with 2014, manually fixing the few assembly files that I had created in 2012. I'll continue to recreated the 11,000 solid model files that were lost when I was forced to convert to Inventor (the migration utility for MDT to Inventor was worthless). I'll continue to curse the day that I called our IT dept with a question about other (at the time unoccupied seat of Autodesk) and got converted from a standalone license to network license. MDT seemed to be bullet proof and hardly ever crashed except for the first version of 2004 and 2009. I should have stopped the subscription at 2008 which was the best one after MDT6.

So far, this whole thing of going to Inventor has put me almost 2 years behind.

Barry Hazel
Mfg. Engineer
Lau / Ruskin Company
Rochester Plant
(574) 224-5200
Message 12 of 12
ChrisMitchell01
in reply to: Barry1Lau

Hi Barry,


At this stage I would suggest that you open 2 specifc support calls instead of relying on this ad-hoc forum. Product Support should easily be able to guide you through the necessary steps for a successful 2012-2014 upgrade in a screenshare.

 

Yes, migrating from MDT to Inventor requires some specific steps to be performed, but it does work very well, so there should be no need to recreate those 11,000 files; Product Support have info about all of that in a very usable form.

 

Thanks,
Chris



Chris Mitchell
PDMS Customer Engagment Team
Autodesk, Inc.

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