Delete a Material Style

[Anonymous]

I added sever materials to the Style Library and after I was done I noticed that one of the Style names had a typo in it.  When I tried to "RENAME" the style it made a new style with the correct name but kept the old style with the incorrect name.  I cannot get rid of the incorrect material style.  There is no delete available on the "right click" menu and purging doesn't actually seem to do anything when I try to purge it.

 I want to delete it from the Style Library so it no longer appears in the material list that is available.  How do I do this?

[jtylerbc · Accepted solution]

Use the Style Library Manager, which is an external program that installs with Inventor.

[SBix26]

To elaborate on what jtylerbc wrote, the only thing that you can do to a style library from within Inventor is save to it (and that's only if your project says you may do so).  The Styles Editor operates only within the current open file.  To modify a style library otherwise, you must use the Style Library Manager which can migrate libraries, copy styles between libraries and delete styles from libraries.

It would be more intuitive to the user (but also more dangerous) to bring that management functionality inside Inventor.

[jtylerbc]

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@sbixler wrote:

It would be more intuitive to the user (but also more dangerous) to bring that management functionality inside Inventor.

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For my own use, I'd like it being brought into Inventor.  But from a standpoint of someone who has been at two companies just starting out with Inventor, that's a scary thought.  Especially in a company with a bunch of new Inventor users that don't know what they're doing yet, you could turn a perfectly normal, completely sane CAD manager into a Batman villian in about three days.

If they brought it inside Inventor, it would definitely need some sort of rights settings to protect it from unauthorized and accidental meddling.  I would guess that's why it's outside the main program - pretty hard to accidentally delete a style this way.

[Anonymous]

Thanks.  I'm suprised that when I searched the Help file it didn't find anything.  Maybe because the Style Manager isn't integral with Inventor it isn't mentioned in the Help file.

I agree that in a large installation of Inventor having the ability to change the standard styles at individual workstations would be quite taxing on a CAD manager.  Fortunately there are only two of us using Inventor and we sit right next to each other and can easily discuss how we want to handle these types of things.  I normally just make the changes and then Save them to the style library which we have as writeable.  I guess as long as the style library wasn't writeable you should be able to keep individuals from modifying it and then all you have to control is who has access to the Style LIbrary Manager which shouldn't be too difficult.

May I suggest Dr. CADastrophy for the Batman villan name?

[jtylerbc]

It is mentioned in the help, but you almost have to know it's there to find it.  If you search for "manage styles" or "style manager", it will be about the 4th entry down.

I like the name.  I may use it when I go insane the next time I see a dimension of 0 instead of a coincident constraint . . .