Assembly sticky color override

[nicolaken.barozzi]

When we do welded assemblies, we do not want to color each single part as it confuses manufacturers and does not color teh weldments.

We would like to change the appearance of the whole assembly and have that stick so that any assembly that use this one will keep the assembly color.

We tried using derived parts as substitute level of details and coloring those but is was a nightmare as updates weren't automatic and fast.

Basically it would be nice to treat the welded assembly WRT color as a part but dot having to derive.

[rerickson]

I'm really not sure if this idea will help you or not but it might be worth a try:

If you create your parts as iPart Factories you can create a custom parameter named say "Color" and change it to be an appearance parameter and set it to any color you want. You could then create say two versions of the exact same part but change the color in the table for each version, "Part1" and "Part1-Manufacture".  After this you can create your weldment assembly, and then make it into an iAssembly with Assembly1 and Assembly2.  In the table you can now replace each of your parts in the table to make two identicle assemblies but with two different colors. Assembly1 would have parts , "Part1 + Part2 + Part....." and Assembly2 would have parts, "Part1-Manufacture + Part2-Manufacture + Part-Manufacture....." .  The first Assembly would be normal color or colors, how ever you wanted, and the second assembly would have a different single color for each Part.

The beauty of doing this like this as well is that even if you have to modify your parts shapes and or sizes later, you can do that within the table or externally and it will have no affect on your coloring.  I realize this might be confusing, especially if you are not familiar with iParts and iAssemblies, however it is actually very quick and easy to do and will most likely make what you are trying to do go much easier and faster and is rather easy to update.

You could even go a step futher and create two custom styles, one for customer parts and one for your manufactured parts.  I hope this helps you out and simplifies what you are trying to accomplish.

[nicolaken.barozzi]

Interesting hack, but still a workaround.

I have a simpler take on your idea, and that is to simply use View Representations and select them to be associative in the assembly.

Apart from it being cumbersome, the weldments still remain plain color, and I have to override all of them.

[wislbait]

We do a LOT of painted weldments.  The method we've used is to set up the top-level weldment assembly as an iAssembly factory, and create a member for each size variation, as well as each color variation.  Takes a little bit of hand-holding up front when you first generate the members out of the factory, but then everywhere that member is used/consumed, it is already the correct color for its lifetime.

Select each item in the browser you want to paint:

Set the paint color for all the selected components from the Appearances drop-down.  Then select all of the members from your table list in the browser you want to generate as that color.  Generate those members:

Repeat for each color needed:

Inventor basically creates something like a hidden, local Design View Representation in each generated member.  So your "sibling tree" will look something like this in the generated members work folder:

Whenever you place the desired member of the weldment, it brings in the correctly painted member as such:

As I originally said, it's kind of a micro-managing hassle up-front when generating the different members out manually like that, but it works very well after it's done.  It would be nice if a future Inventor release allowed the option to designate a column in the table as an Appearance column (as it can be in an iPart factory) and have that drive the DVR when it generates them out - maybe with a companion toggle attribute for each component in the assembly that allows it to be painted or not - then all you'd have to do is just set and designate a column in the table and assign the finish/appearance value in it and then let the software work its magic.

A lot of our welded assemblies have dozens of size-and-color combinations, which makes setting up the lower-level components as painted and bringing them in through Table Replace in the iAssembly a logistical nightmare, which is, as the OP stated, not what we want to do.  A few of our base component parts have 450+ size variations to them (cut lengths of channels), and we have over 200 different paint colors to choose from.  The thought of having to set up a 90,000+ member family table to cover all of the possible combinations is just ludicrous and totally impractical.  Yes, this method has its potential drawbacks and limitations, but it's the best workaround I've come up with and it's been treating us very well for many years now.

[DRoam]

@nicolaken.barozzi, it's been a while so hopefully you see this, but it sounds to me like this is what you want: You want to override the color of each Part in your weldment, and you want that color override to stick when you place your Weldment inside another Assembly.

Is that an accurate and complete summary?

If so, you can already accomplish this using an Appearance override in your Weldment.

Just select all of the components in your Weldment, and use the Appearance dropdown or Adjust tool to change their appearance. This will apply to the current View Rep of your weldment, and any time you place that Weldment inside of an assembly with that View Rep applied, your appearance overrides will be carried over.

[inv.ideareview]

Thanks for sharing your Idea. We use this forum to guide product development and help users in the best way we can based on voting. We occasionally merge Ideas or archive old ones to keep the forum working properly - it ensures there is room for people to review new Ideas and that the most relevant and meaningful ones can gain votes. We’re archiving this Idea because it's been on the board for well over a year and hasn't received many votes from the community. If you want to raise it again and try to gain more support, you're welcome to do so. We’ve found that pictures and mock-ups can help get concepts across and win more votes from other users. If you have questions or see a connection between this Idea and others, let us know. - Inventor product team (Inv.idea review)