Manipulate Appearances in the Profiler

[ngombault]

Hi

Can I create/delete/modify appearances in the Appearance Profiler, just like it seems to be possible in the Timeliner Appearances?

The Appearance Profiler being a plugin, I don't find any documentation on it.

thanks

[xiaodong_liang]

Hi,

Appearance Profiler is totally a convenient tool for user to select specific objects and override the color/transparency.

No API for [appearance profiler], but the developer can implement the similar functionalities.

[By Category]: Search API

http://adndevblog.typepad.com/aec/2012/07/use-search-api.html

[By Set] : Selection Set

http://adndevblog.typepad.com/aec/2012/08/add-search-selectionset-in-net.html

[Appearance]: straightforward ways in API such as 

OverridePermanentColor 

OverridePermanentTransparency 

OverridePermanentTransform (2014)

[ngombault]

Hi Xiaodong,

Thanks for your response... again.

I know that one can implements similar functionalities than the Appearance Profiler using the API, I was talking more about manipulating the Appearance Profiler API itself.

My senario is that I have some DataProperties with 10s if not 100s of different values, and to manually create an appearance for each of them from the Appearance Profiler, not to mention all the required selection sets, takes forever.

I indeed ended up using the API to create some thing similar to the Appearance Profiler but that also supports automatic buliding of the "color filter" for a given property (one appearance for each value); and applying it to the model is pretty straight forward and fast.

For a more consistent user experience though, I wanted to be able to save this appearances to the Appearance Profiler, but it can't be manipulated AND it doesn't seem to be possible to write your own .dat file format that it uses for exports/imports.

[xiaodong_liang]

Hi ngombault,

no API for Appearances Profiler, as I know. But it looks it is also OK to you if you know the format of the *.DAT file? Thus you could write it yourself and the user could load it when needed? 

[ngombault]

you are right, knowing how to write the *.dat would be fine with me (although I am a srong supporter of *.xml in general)

[xiaodong_liang · Accepted solution]

Hi ngombault,

I consulted with our engineer team. The *.DAT is a binary, unfortunately there is no any API to stream it in & out. And its format is also not public right now. Sorry for the bad news. We will conduct the annual survey soon. You could raise your comment there. 

[zhounnin]

is it fixed? i mean directly manipulate Appearance Profiler via API

[kevin.wan]

I would like to know as well, or if any workaround to read/write the .dat externally will we appreciated.

[ulski1]

I could write a demo for reading and writing dat files if Autodesk refuses to do it
Br
Ulrik

[jmontesh]

Hi, I´m trying to use the appearance profiler and manipulate it. Has anything been updated? Is there any API for the appearance profiler?

[ulski1]

What do you mean when you say you want to manipulte Appearance profiler. If you could explain what you are trying to do it would be easier to provide some help.