Default appearance not appearing

[rhetths]

Recently i made a material that i created the default material.  I did this in preferences.  I might now be using this default for the first time but i am not sure.  When i extrude to create a component it appears invisible, it has no appearance.  I have fiddled with the preferences to no avail.  I could give the component i just created an appearance after creating it but of course i don't want to have to do that every time.

I am noticing changes to the Fusion programming which is creating confusion and extra clicking.  If Fusion keeps changing i may never get on top of it, like a slippery slope.

[jhackney1972]

You need to attach your model showing this behavior.  

[rhetths]

Okay here it is, attached.

[jhackney1972 · Accepted solution]

Fusion 360 materials are just that material assignments of properties and physical characteristics.   To finish creating any new material, you need to add an Appearance.  You can do this, as I did in the Screencast, or you can open the Material Browser and edit the material and click on the "+" and select Appearance.  You can then select an appearance to associate with your new material.  Since I have already done this once, the Appearance choice is grayed out in my screen capture.

[rhetths]

Thats confusing because i created that material a long time ago and have been using it all the time and it had an appearance.  I think i used another aluminium as my template when i created it but not sure. 

[rhetths]

Because i am still confused by this would you mind please looking at the file attached to this reply and tell me what is going on?

[rhetths]

There seems to be some kind of (confusing) interplay between the default material and appearance, and other materials and appearances?  Somehow a material i created (Capral) still exists in the list on the right (seemingly without an appearance), as well as i have created only one extrusion, one material in this file, and yet it says that there are two materials in the drawing, both Capral, and yet with two different appearances.

[jhackney1972 · Accepted solution]

You have created a new Material and assigned an Appearance to go with it.  The old material in still in your model but can be easily replaced by the method I show in the Screencast.  Model with your new Material is attached.

[rhetths]

Okay, thanks.  It seems that the one you want to keep is the one you drag across and onto another one (?).

I just created a new file with a new component to see what i get as my default.  I get the correct material, but in the material library it shows it has a black appearance, and in the drawing it has no appearance.  I imagine it can be set up so the default is the material i want and the appearance i want?  Somehow i don't seem to be able to do that.

[jhackney1972 · Accepted solution]

I have created a Screencast that maps out the complete process of creating a new material and saving it to a Library for future use.  I want to emphasis two things about the process.  The first is that all editing work is done while the material is in the Favorites folder.  Second thing is, when I placed the new material, the icon, showing the appearance did not appear correctly, I have not explanation for this but it works anyway.

[rhetths]

Thankyou so much for doing this.  I am back on the computer and starting to work through this.

It seems we have identified at least two clear faults with Fusion360 so far?

In 'Preferences' you take us to a box labelled 'Material Name' and tell us that this controls the appearance, in which case i would think it should be labelled 'Material Appearance'?  This issue has been causing me problems, as anyone might expect.  Nevertheless i do have this default as 'Aluminium - Satin' which is what i want as my default and yet when i created that new file with that new component it did not have an appearance and the material property dialog had the appearance as black.  I hope your instructions will fix this when i get that far.

The second clear issue is the one you mention.

I think there is another thing i would change.  It has always seemed to me that the material appearance should be included in the material identity and or properties dialog.  I don't see any reason for it to be separate, and to be within a '+' tab which one might not think to explore when looking for appearance options.

[rhetths]

Okay, i followed your instructions and created a new folder "My New Materials" with my material in it and with an appearance.  But the preferences dialog only allows me to choose the default material from "Favourites Library" or from "Fusion360 Material Library".

[jhackney1972 · Accepted solution]

To solve your question, I created another Screencast showing you the sequence of assign a material from my newly created material library to my default Preference material.  As I say in the Screencast, my must restart Fusion 360 during the process.

[rhetths]

Thanks again.

Upon starting a new session i went in and found that i could now select 'My New Materials' in 'preferences' -> 'my material defaults'.  The material side of things then worked.  Solved.

However, also in 'preferences' -> 'my material defaults' I tried to use the appearance from the 'My New Materials' folder but it only gave me the option of 'metal' appearance and it was a different appearance to what i have for my material.  I have my material appearance as satin aluminium.  So i grabbed the correct appearance out of the appearance library, and it worked.

So my question now is should i be grabbing the appearance for the default out of my 'New Materials Library' somehow, or is that the wrong approach?

[jhackney1972 · Accepted solution]

I am glad you have the solution to assigning your Preferences default Material.  Basically the same process is used to assign your Preferences default Appearance.  In the model you supplied you had assigned a "provide" Fusion 360 Appearance, Aluminum - Satin, which makes it confusing to your to assign it to your Preferences.  In the Screencast, I added both the Aluminum - Satin, as a copy of the Fusion 360 standard appearance, and created a new one to your custom Materials library and then assigned the new one to the Preferences.  Pardon me if my Materials library is a different name than the last video, I deleted it after I created my last Screencast to you.

[rhetths]

Thanks.  It seems you have helped me achieve what i needed to achieve.

Maybe i have found this topic so difficult partly because i managed to achieve what i wanted in this area previously without looking at any tutorials, so i thought i had some handle on it even though really i hardly understood what i had done.

I still find it difficult to comprehend the extent to which fusion divorces the material from it's appearance, versus having some link between the material and an appearance.  I am not sure if this is managed well by the program or not.