Hi @ryan.bales,
Thanks for your response and for the links - both very useful.
Thanks also for your tip about
selecting and hiding you can right click on the appearance from the appearance dialog and use "select objects applied to" then use the show/hide shortcut "v".
I have tried this out on an existing design but I'm not getting the results I expect. When I click on 'select objects applied to' it only highlights the master component and not any of the duplicates. When I click 'v' everything disappears, not just the highlighted components. This screencast shows the issue - FYI when I click V at the end Im only left with a weird blue outline of part of one of the parts I selected? This will be very misleading in a large assembly where similar looking / named components are dotted all over the place. Is there any way for Fusion to show that the master component AND the duplicates have a particular material applied so its a bit clearer? Out of interests, is there any way to escape from the 'v' hide all view without hitting escape and loosing the physical material window?
Also, having to individually apply physical materials to bodies buried within components will be very time consuming. If for instance one forgets to change the physical material when modelling an assembly with several hundred components (which will happen), it will take an age to individually apply physical materials to each body one at a time! Is there any way to speed this up, say by selecting multiple bodies in different components and applying a material to them en mass? I haven't had time to test this but just wondered if it's possible.
In my previous post I mentioned that I can currently colour particular materials not for appearance but purely for identification (say stainless steel being pink, MDF being brown, laminated board being green, aluminum being yellow for instance). This is of great benefit if for instance one is using two materials that have a very similar appearance in the modelling environment (say steel and aluminium which both show as light grey) because its very hard to tell which is which. In Fusion, if I select the material and go 'select objects applied to' it only highlights the master component, not any of the sub components. I then have to hide everything in order to see what body has what material applied. When I click back off so that everything is visible, I have to remember exactly what material is applied to what part. It's just not that clear in my opinion. This screencast shows the issue. If one were able to have all items that are aluminium show as yellow and all items that are steel show as pink (in a separate user selected / defined render style) then it would be very easy to see what parts had what physical material applied. I know this doesn't exist in Fusion at the moment but I think it would make material identification a great deal easier and would speed up modelling and reduce errors.
This link shows how Im able to cycle through render modes in my current software. I have a shaded with textures, a colour by layer (with each material having a different layer colour, eg pink is laminated board, yellow is MDF and melamine faced MDF is orange in this design) a hidden line and a wire frame mode saved into my model. The colour by layer view really helps being able to identify what parts are made of what material when the finish colours are similar or the same; as you can see the laminated board and melamine faced MDF are both white in finish colour so trying to tell which is which is complicated unless you use the colour by layer render style. Having 'style' like this in Fusion would be a massive help when modelling I think.
Thanks again for the links.
