How to carry appearances through fusion 360 export?

[danielABF9K]

Hello,

I have a part that has a lot of body's and components in fusion that I need to bring into Inventor. I know that I can save it as .iam or a .STEP  file but I really need the appearances to carry over. Base colors like red or blue do export but glass and stainless steel come in as just white. The only way I've been able to get around this is save as an .SAT file and re apply my appearances to the body's and features individually, which takes to mush time.

So my question really is there a way to export my Fusion 360 file to Inventor with all appearances and materials still applied. 

Thank you.

[jhackney1972]

Instead of assigning an Appearance to your components in Fusion360 before export as a STEP file, assign a Material.  Materials carry an appearance that will transfer.

[danielABF9K]

Thank you for the speedy response,

As you can see in these screenshots, when I changed the materials in Fusion (I also deleted all appearances that aren't the material) they appear in Inventor as an appearance, not a material. I have no idea why the material carries over as an appearance instead of a material, but even at that I wonder why the appearances are all stark white and not the applied material. 

[jhackney1972]

I cannot particularly tell what you are doing in your Screen Shots but if you assign a material, in Fusion 360, to a component and then your export it as a STEP file, import it into Inventor, it comes in as the same material.  The appearance follows the material assigned, which can be changed if needed.

[danielABF9K]

Thank you for your speedy responses,

I see that the materials are coming through now thanks for that. But, I am not making parts with just 1 material. I am making objects with glass and stainless and linoleum. When I bring a part or assembly from Fusion Inventor only sees 1 of the materials, despite being a multibody part or assembly. I need all materials to still be applied to there corresponding body's or parts.

[jhackney1972 · Accepted solution]

The process is the same with an Assembly.  You keep mentioning BODIES, to make this work, your assembly must be composed of Components, which of course contain bodies.  You are assigning Materials to the components of your assembly.  Again I will mention, if you do not like the appearance assigned to a particular material, it can be changed.  I have attached my assembly STEP file if you want to look at it.  You really need to attach your model to your post then we can see what you issue is.  All you have been attaching are screen captures which do not show the nature of your assembly.

[danielABF9K]

There it is!

I was expecting to be able to change the specific materials of body's not components. I didn't know that I had to convert everything to components. The assembly I have been trying to bring into inventor was made up of multiple body's not components. So in these 2 files, one is the multibody part that I've been trying to bring into inventor. And the 2nd one is the same part with all the body's converted to components. So all my assemblies that have multiple parts with different materials in it, those individual body's have to be converted to components? 

[jhackney1972]

An assembly, by definition is composed of Components, which in turn contain bodies and their corresponding sketches.  In the assembly you sent, you did not maintain this structure.  You need to create the component first, make sure it is active, create your body sketches and then create bodies and features.  Using this method, the sketches and bodies, related to the components, all appear UNDER the component.  You then GROUND one component, that makes sense, and then use Joints to assembly all the components together.  You use a Rigid Group which may be fine for this assembly but others that have to move, change position, etc. you will want to use Joints.

So the answer to your question is YES, all your bodies should be components if you want to assign Materials.  Using the Create Components from Bodies command will not give you proper assembly structure.

Now that you have your answer, please do not forget to Accept Solution to close your question and allow others to find it easily.