Should "Pack and Go" utility bring appearances with assemblies?

[hbohm]

I have an assembly that I'm working on with my office PC. I applied all of the appearances/materials to the parts on this same PC. However, my office PC is not powerful enough to do some of the rendering that is required for this assembly, so I take it home to do the rendering on my home PC which has the same seat of Inventor installed. The only difference is this: my office PC uses Vault Basic w/ Vault Server Material Libraries so all of my co-workers can share the same libraries. My home PC is using its local Desktop Material Libraries that is installed, instead of the same Vault Server Material Libraries on the work server.

Here is my problem: When I open the assembly on my home PC all of the applied appearances are now white. So I tried using the Pack and Go utility at work, figuring it would grab all the appearances being used for the assembly, and opened it at home again, but all the colors are still white.

I'm not sure what to do at this point. Is there a way that I can "bundle" all of the missing appearances together with the assembly so that it is accessible to any computer I open it with?

My work PC is using Autodesk Inventor 2013 64-bit on Windows 7 Professional and Vault Basic 2013.

My home PC is using Autodesk Inventor 2013 64-bit on Windows 7 Ultimate.

Has anyone else dealt with this type of situation?

-Holden

[cwhetten · Accepted solution]

Pack n Go has an option to include the design data that controls appearances.  In the Pack n Go dialog, make sure the option to 'Skip Styles' is UNCHECKED.  See the image below.

When the PnG completes, you will have a folder called Design Data that houses all of the material and appearance data.  You will also have a new project file created by the PnG process.  See the image below.

In Inventor, set the new project file (in my example, TnP Test 1.ipj) as the active project, then take a look at the project's folder options.  Normally, it should set your folder options to use the correct folders for design date, templates, and content center, and you can see in the image below that this happened for the templates and the content center files.  However, I noticed that after I finished the PnG, the project file folder option for design data was set to [Default], which wasn't correct.  I had to manually change the folder option for design data to .\Design Data\ so that it would look in the design data folder that was created in the Pack n Go process.

You may have to do the same.

Once you get the design data copied and the project file set to look at the copied data, you should be good to go.

One thing to note, however, is that if you are using custom appearance texture files, you will need to manually copy those from your work machine to your home machine in order for Inventor to be able to find and apply them.  If you aren't using custom texture files, then don't worry about it; but, if you are, post back and I will explain what you need to do with those to get it to work.

Cameron Whetten
Inventor 2014

Please click "Accept as Solution" if this response answers your question.

[hbohm]

Thanks for the detailed walkthrough. I found the Skip Styles button, and unchecked it. But I did overlook the new project file it creates. I'll give this a shot when I get home. However, I am using custom appearances that I have created. They are either modified from the original appearance that is there, or copied and modified separately from the original. How should I go about copying these modified appearances to my home PC? Thanks for the prompt reply.

[cwhetten]

The modified appearances should copy just fine, so you shouldn't have to worry about that.  I was talking specifically about custom texture files.  Some appearance styles use a texture file (kind of like a decal made of a JPEG).  The image below shows one of Inventor's appearance styles that uses a texture file, in this case a .PNG file.  It is possible to have an appearance style that uses a custom texture file (custom as in 'didn't come with Inventor').

Cameron Whetten
Inventor 2014

[hbohm]

Oh alright. Thanks for the clarification. I should be good to go then. I will try it out again when I have some time this weekend. Thanks for your help!

[hbohm]

The solution you posted worked for me. It brought in all of my customized appearances to the Pack and Go folder. However, for some reason I had to "re-apply" them once I opened it with my home PC. They were still white, but I simply changed the appearance to something else temporarily and then changed it back and that seemed to update it for me. Thanks for your help Cameron.