A Guide to Creating Inventor Material and Appearances

[#1]

1.0 – Introduction

This document will assist CAD Administrators or designers on how to create and implement a company specific material and appearance library for their design team. It will show how to create and add new materials along with how to set this library as the default library to be used in the company specific project file.

Why would a company want to spend the time to generate their own library one might ask? Well, if a company only uses a specific set of materials and only uses certain paint colors, this eliminates a user from being able to choose materials or paints the company doesn’t normally use.

2.0 – Assigning Materials to Parts

To create a company specific library, first start a new part template. Once opened, there are two ways to get to the material browser. First, is by going to the TOOLS TAB > MATERIAL AND APPEARANCE PANEL > MATERIAL button.

The second way is to use the QUICK ACCESS TOOLBAR > MATERIAL button.

Once either button is selected, a window will appear which is the material browser dialog box. This is where a user can edit and create new mateirals.

The window is broken down into two sections. The upper portion is the document materials section. This will display the materials the have been assigned to the part and show what the current active material is. As shown in the last image, there is only (1) material in the current part and that is “Generic”.

The lower section of the material browser is the library portion. It displays all the materials of the current ACTIVE library. As shown in the previous image, the Inventor Material Library is the current active library and all the materials available in that library are shown on the right hand side of the lower portion of the window.

There are three ways a material can be added to a part. The first way is to use the material drop-down in the Quick Access Toolbar:

The second method is to use the iProperties portion of the part file. Right-click on the part name in the model browser, then choose iPROPERTIES> PHYSICAL TAB > MATERIAL DROP-DOWN

The third method is to actually use the material browser itself. Find the desired material and Right-click > Assign to Selection

Or, use the first button on the right of the selected line and choose add material to document:

All this works fine, but the company has no real way to make sure all users are using the same materials for like components. For example, if a company uses Aluminum 6061, depending on the library selected (Inventor Material Library vs. Autodesk Material Library), one user could just choose Aluminum and another could Choose Aluminum 6061. One user didn’t know what library to choose materials from. So to fix this, make a company specific library where users will only have to look into one library.

3.0 – Creating the Custom Company Library

To Create a company specific library, open the material browser and in the lower left corner there is a folder icon. Choose the drop-down and select Create New Library:

Next, a window appears prompting where to save the library file and what to call it. In the design data of the company project, there is a Material folder. Just save it in there.

Once save is clicked, the material browser will return and the library is shown and empty.

Now it is time to start createing the custom materials. 

3.1 – Creating Materials

Since the new library is currently empty, one could use the generic material and create it all, but there are some Autodesk created materials that have most of the work already done. The user just needs them to be in their company specific library. Use the browser in the lower left corner of the material browser to choose a library to find a material close to what is needed to start with. For example, your company uses Aluminum 6061. Expand HOME>INVENTOR MATERIAL LIBRARY>ALUMINUM 6061 and choose to add it to the current document. Notice in the image it is bold, this means it is the current active material.

All materials also have an appearance associated with them and Aluminum 6061 has Aluminum-Flat as an appearance.

3.2 – Duplicating Material

In the previous image the material added was from another library and added to the current document. The company doesn’t use the full name, maybe they abbreviate as AL-6061. Keep in mind, this is the name used if pulling material properties into parts list, so it would be a good idea to make this match company syntax. Using the previous material as a starting point, Right-click on the material in the browser and choose Duplicate. This will create a duplicate material and appearance denoted with a (1) as shown below.

Since the name is in blue waitng to be edited, just type what syntax is to be used. In this case use AL-6061.

Since all materials have an appearance associated with them, the appearance has been duplicated in this process as well. Just because the material has been renamed doesn’t mean that the appearance has been renamed. As it currently sits, the material has name AL-6061, but the appearance is Aluminum-Flat(1). This can be seen by using the appearance drop-down next to the material drop-down in the Quick Access Toolbar:

3.3 – Edit Material Information

Once you have created a new material from a starting material doesn’t mean ALL the information will be correct. You may have started with some generic Steel material, but really you needed to create a CR1018 steel. You can edit the physical properties and appearance names of the material from the material editor window.

Right-click on the new material AL-6061 and choose Edit. This opens the Material Editor window. This is where you assign all the information about the material itself such as Identity information, appearance information, and Physical information.

A lot of the information will be filled out if the material was copied from an Autodesk instance. But, we need to change the name of the appearance associated with the material itself. So, click on the Appearance tab, expand the information section if not already, and notice the name of the appearance that has been associated with the material.

Clicking on the Physical tab is where all the physical information about the material is placed such as mechanical, strength and electrical properties.

To change the appearance associated to this newly created material, go to the Appearance tab and expand the Information area. Simply overwrite the name with the same name as the material itself such as: AL-6061 as shown below:

Clicking OK will apply the changes. If you close the browser and look in the Quick Access Toolbar you will see the appearance change to the same name as the material. If you don’t see a change in the name, just change the material to something else and then back to see the update, as sometimes there is a hangup in the display.

3.4 – Material Physical Properties

The physical properties of all materials need to be as exact as we can get them for weights, and calculations. If you are creating a new material, you will want to give it the correct mechanical and strength values along with the correct density for weight.

For the AL-6061 that was created previously, right-click on it in the material browser and choose EDIT. Now, go to the PHYSICAL tab. Double check the physical information here.

3.5 – Saving Newly Created Materials to the Company Library

Once a new material has been defined, it is time to place it into the custom material library. As of right now, it is just in the current document only. In the material browser, right-click on the AL-6061 material and choose Add to > Then select your company library as shown below:

In the material browser, now switch the library on the lower left to the company specific library. You will now see your newly created material there.

4.0 – Appearance Browser

The appearance browser is just like the material browser except it will only show the appearances that have been created and not materials. The appearance browser can be accessed in the same ways as the material browser, except the icon looks like what is shown below:

The browser itself looks identical and the workflow is the same as the material browser, it just alters the appearances instead. A user can create all the appearances such as paint colors and the material appearances they want to use here, versus creating the appearance while creating the material. A Reason one might like this workflow is that they can create exactly what material appearances they want first, then while creating the material, they can replace the appearance asset with this predefined appearance instead of needing to replace the default appearance in the material later.

4.1 – Adding the Company Specific Library to the Appearance Library

To see the appearance that currently exists in your company specific library, you need to make sure that it has been added to the appearance browser window. To do this, in the lower left corner of the browser, there is a folder, choose the drop-down and instead of creating a library, choose Open Existing Library:

Browse to the company specific library and choose Open. Next, expand the home area and select the Company specific library and you will now see the appearances associated with the library. Notice, you can see the AL-6061 from earlier when the material was created.

5.0 – Set The Primary Material and Appearance Library

Now that the company specific material and appearance library has been created, it needs to be set in the project file as the primary library to be used, as these will be the only materials and appearances designers can choose from on projects.

Edit the project file and expand the material and appearance sections. The bold line is the current active library for the project. Notice that the current active library is the Inventor Material Library as shown below:

This is also what is checked when you choose the drop downs for material and appearances:

Right-Click on appearance library and choose > Add Library

Browse and select the company specific library. Now it has been added. The final thing to do is make this the active library. Right-click on it and choose “Active Library”

It now becomes bold indicating it is the active appearance library:

Repeat for the material section of the project file:

Now when a new part is created, the custom library will be what is checked and what is available:

Keeping the defualt libraries in the project for the CAD Admin is a good idea, as they will need access to everything to create new materials or appearances. As for the company project that all the designers will use, they should be removed and only have the company specific one available to them. In the image above, the reason “Generic” is still there, is the template has that as the default material. All that needs to be done, is to have a different material set as the default, and the Generic material and appearance removed from the document. “Genereic” doesn’t exist in the library unless a user has added them.

6.0 – Change Appearance Asset

Sometimes a user just wants a different look to the appearance. Maybe you like the rusted look of the plate texture or maybe you want a brushed look for your aluminum. The appearance can be swapped out, or the Asset can be changed. In this example, we are going to swap the appearance of the AL-6061 with the “Aluminum – Dark” appearance.

Open the material browser, and if the current AL-6061 is not in the current document you can add it by choosing the material from the lower portion and choosing to add via the two options as discussed before:

Once added, right-click and choose edit and then click on the appearance tab. There are two ways to open the asset browser. First is in the appearance tab of the material editor (double arrow). The second is at the bottom of the window next to the folder:

This browser will allow you to search any other library that is associated with your project and swap it out. The CAD administrator should have all libraries just for this reason. Next, browse and find the asset of intrest, and in this case choose “Aluminum - Dark”.  When you hover over an appearance, there is a “double arrow” on the right side of the line, select that to swap the appearance.

This will swap the asset and actually give the material a new appearance. Now the name is different. Material AL-6061 now has the appearance of “Aluminum – Dark”.

To fix our original appearance, just rename the original AL-6061 appearance to “-old” and rename the new appearance of “Aluminum-Dark” to AL-6061 in the appearance browser. To do this, just right-click on the appearance and choose Rename.

This rename is just a local document change, you actually want to replace what is in the library with the new asset. Right-click on the new AL-6061 appearance and choose Add To > Your Company Library. A dialog will appear prompting to either replace or keep both appearances

Choose Replace to replace what is in the library. Now the material of AL-6061 will use this new appearance.

7.0 – Updating Materials and Appearances in old Parts

Over time, material properties may be updated, or there might be appearance changes such as altering the shade of paint for example. Once the changes have been made in either material or appearance browsers and then saved back to the library, all a user needs to do is just open any existing part or assembly, then choose the Manage Tab > Styles and Standards Panel > Update. Just like drawings, the part or assembly will update to what has been changed in the company library.