Cannot clean "material" column

[nuno.gomes]

Hi all,

Using Inventor 2014 Professional.

I have created an iassembly made of several other iassemblies, iparts and content center parts.

In the drawing of this iassembly, in the Material column, I want to show some and I want not to show others.

Seems pretty easy at the first, so the ones I want to show I have defined the Material and the others not.

But by default, on the ones I did not defined material, it gives me "generic" and somehow it seems impossible to have it empty.

I just want to be able to clean the material, or else, I want to have no designation of material for these iassemblies.

Does anyone knows how to do this and available to help?

Thanks

[cbenner]

The standard material i-property cannot be empty, it will always be at least set to Generic.  If you want to show material in your parts list, but only in some rows, you may need to create a custom property column in your i-assembly for the material.  Name it something other than material so it won't get confused with the standard property.  Maybe Mat'l?  You can then map that to your parts list and show whatever you wish.

[nuno.gomes]

Thanks cbenner for the quick answer!

I was having that thought (the standard material cannot be empty) until I discovered another iassembly in the same table that has the material empty.

Picture attached.

The only difference between these two iassemblies, is that one had material assigned and was then changed to "generic", because I coudn't erase, while the other has never had material assigned.

From this point I assume that if since the beginning you do not assined any material to the iassembly, you will be able to have it clen in the drawing table.

Is this correct?

Thanks

Nuno

[cbenner · Accepted solution]

That looks like it is possible, I've never tried that.  Make certain first, that none of the fields in your parts list were manually overridden (static value).  If what you say is true, (and it may be) my fear would be that someone else may open the part and change or add a material... do you have a way to prevent that?

This might work for new parts that do not already have a material assigned, but (personal opinion) I would feel like I had more control with a custom property.  True, you can't tie it to the part's material i-property and would have to manually fill it in... but if I wanted some to have a material and some not... that might be the way I'd go.  Again,.. personal preference.