Updated to INV 2014 --> problems with appearances and libraries

[sven_tejcka]

Hey there,

we are currently updating our Inventor (Oriduct Design Suite Premium) installations from INV2012 to 2014 (skipped 2013).

I´ve now learned that the color/material stuff changed.

So my plan was to create a custom library with all materials and apperances that we use in the company.

So far so good.

I now did this and also gave the materials and appearances names that match our needs.

Then I use project files (ipj) where only the cusom libraries are used for material and apperances.

So now I have some issues:

a) Replace an apperance in an ipt 

If I open a part (ipt) with 2012 format I have appearances and materials in the "Document Appearance" Section of the Appearance / Material Browser.

Obviously Inventor uses a copy within the document.

How can I force Inventor that these materials / appearances are replaced by the ones from the library ?

How can I replace a material / apperance with the material / apperance with a different name =

e. g. I want to replace documents material "aluminum" with "aluminium 6061" from the library.

Or the color "blue" with "std_blue_glossy" ?

b) Replace color overrides

We often use step files as starting point.

Import them and then override the color of specific faces with another color.

E.g. we use a Step file of a connector, use a black plastics a s material for the component (and therefore get a completely black connector as it inherits the color from the material). Then we select to connector pins and overide the color by a shiny fgold color.

If I now open such a component in 2014.....

How can I replace only the color of the overridden faces by an apperance in the apperance library?

c) update apperance / material from the library

If I make any changes in the material / apperance library, how can I update the materials / apperances in the ipt files to reflec the changes ?

Hopefully the inventor developpers had an eye on these issues.....

Best regards

Sven

[ChrisMitchell01]

Sven,

On the manage tab,there is a command called Update. This will allow you to pull in any updated library appearances & override the ones with the same name that you already have in document, fro the library. I fyou want to replace in document appaearances with a differently named one, then you can't do that with update, you need to assign the one you want from the library.

If you want to use a different appearance then you can assign the desired appearance at either the individual faces, feature, body or part levels.

You could also change the referenced appaearance for a specific library material, or create a new material with a different name & appearance, so that the then default appearance for that material is as required, when you first use it.

-Chris

[blair]

This is for Inventor 2013 when the new Material and Apperances were released. They are the same for IV2014, it will help you out.

[sven_tejcka]

Thanks for the replies,

so the update with changed materiel / apperance is solved.

But.....

Do I understand it right, that if I want to replace the apperance of faces where I have overwritten the original apperance I must do it by hand ?

Thats a rather hard job for complex components!

We have components (complex connectors) where we overwrote more than 100 faces.......

Is that so weird what we are dping or has Autodesk just forgotten to address that - in our eyes simple issue - customers want to change the apperance of faces that are already overwritten ?

Regards

S,

[Nicolas.Bourquin]

Dear Sven.tejcka

Maybe these links could bring additional information about migration of color/materials:

Link 1

Link 2

I Hope that can help you.

Best Regards

[blair]

The link that Nicholas has provided is great and important. Basically if you migrate your Style first, then when you migrate your IPT's and IAM's everything will work fine. This is especially important if you have custom materials and appearances.

[sven_tejcka]

Hello Mr. Bourquin,

thanks for the links, but they do not help me.

The simple question is:

If I have a component (ipt) with faces that have an overridden appearance (e.g. the faces property "As Feature" is overridden by "Pink").

I now want to change only the overriden appearance "Pink" by the appearance "Yellow".

How can I do this ?

I hope the translation is correct becaue in my german Inventor the apperances are called "Wie Elemen", "Pink" and "Gelb".

Regards

Sven

[blair]

The same way you changed the Over-RIde to Pink, simply select Yellow. All that has really changed from IV2012 to IV2013/IV2014 is the separation of Material Properties which contain Mass and other physical properties for FEA work. Appearance is just that, it is only the color finish of the material. It won't change the Mass or any FEA properties. RMB on the Face or Feature, it will bring up the Properties box, then make your Appearance change in the dialogue box.

[Nicolas.Bourquin]

Dear Sven.tejcka,

If you have an ipt file and faces have been overrided with color pink, you just need to pick again the faces (you can use shift to select multi-faces) and then on the ribbon, you can select the color yellow on the drowpdown list:

.

By the fact it is possible to assign different colors to different faces of the same part, there is no automatic process to change a specific color applied on faces by another specific color.

Hope that will help you.

Best Regards

[sven_tejcka]

Hey there,

thanks for the information.

Well I assumed, that there is no easy way and that I have to do it completely manually.

But I hope you can understand that this is quite an effort if we have a component with more than 250 faces and we have overriden 150 of them.

There are situations where you have no other possibility than doing it in this way.

My hope was, that in the new Appearance-Browser this can be done.

Because there you have all used appearances of the document listed and the starry-eyed question is "why is there no "replace" function.

I now did some test:

In the Appearance Brower I see in the "Document Appearances" the used ones.

I simply renamed the Appearance "Pink" to "Yellow".

As expected : no change in the component faces.

I then updated the styles (Ribbon: Manage tab Styles and Standards panel Update ).

Now the faces change from pink to yellow......

BUT !

If i then select one of the faces and do a right-click and then properties....there is still "Pink" !!

And if I now do

Manage tab Update panel Rebuild Al

Back to pink......

Why does the component store the "old" name of the appearance if I rename it ??

So there is also no work around ;-(

Hmmmm

Sven

[blair]

Possibly one might be able to write some iLogic code that would look for a certain color and replace it with a different color. Don't think a iLogic code could be written that would filter on faces.

[ChrisMitchell01]

Sven,

The easiest workaround for what you are trying to achieve is to just edit the appearance properties of the currently assigned face override, to whatever you want them to look like.

These changes will be restricted to the document you are working in, but should impact all occurrences of that appearance in that document.

Eg, if you have a black part & with 20 faces changed to be gold & now you want to change gold to look slightly differently, then you can just edit the gold appearance from the appearance browser.

However, if you then do a Manage, update, your changes will be lost, since the original definition of gold from the library will be pulled back in to the document.

If you want your newly changed gold to be the overall standard then you can push that definition back to the library, using manage, Save command. then in all other documents where gold is used, you can do the same update to make the same changes.

As others have stated, if you want to use a "pink" appearance from the library, instead of gold, then you need to reselect all those faces & change them to have the pink override.

What you really need is a "select by appearance" & then replace/assign; that doesn't currently exist.

Hope this helps,

Chris