Appearance on bolts?

[Mustang69]

Most of the bolts I get in gets this dark "plate" color

Not all bolts strangely.

Where in the system is this color set?   I just want default

[CGBenner]

@Mustang69 If these are from the Content Center the appearance was probably assigned to the parent model used to publish the families.  To change this you would need to Save a bolt from that family "As Custom", change the appearance, and then use Replace Family Template in Content Center in order to save your changes back to the Family.  This would need to be done on a Read/Write copy of the Family.

[Mustang69]

Thanks for the tip!  But wow that sounded way to complicated for me.

It has been like this for like 10years now so the system is filled with this look

When using "Content Center" I Always put them in as "custom" since I want them in the same project catalogue. 

[mcgyvr]

I'd suspect that your issue is actually caused because of the lighting style you are using. Lighting can have a major effect on how appearances look. Try changing the lighting style from the lighting style dropdown in the Appearance section of the view tab. You certainly don't want to be forced to do a custom content center to correct the issue. 

[Mustang69]

Thanks....I tried but I don't think it is the lightning style.

When I open the "bolt" for instance there are "Plate" apperence on it.
I have no clue why it is like this since I never have messed with any settings regarding bolts

[blandb]

If this is a custom family, just go to the Content Center Editor, and edit the family table. There should be a material column where you can swap the materials for the fastener, but you can also add a column and call it "finish" or "color" or whatever. When you add the column set the mapping at the bottom of the dialog box to be "Member.Color".

So in the example below, our fasteners have a Steel material, but a Zinc finish.

Once you place a new one, it will have the new finish. You may have to "Refresh Standard Content" for this to work if they are already existing fasteners.

Hope that helps.

[M.Jenaban]

Hi, 

Try changing this to a different lighting style and see if the color changes:

[Mustang69]

I tried it and there is no change

[M.Jenaban]

Very strange, is it in an assembly? Any other parts change color when using different lighting style?

[mcgyvr]

yeah yuck.. I never use the CC so I've never run across this but yes it seems that Inventor uses "Plate" (looks like a hot rolled sheet finish) as the default appearance for "Steel" material and yes that color is rather dark with any of the "default" lighting styles/IBLS.. Surprised this hasn't come up more as I'm sure a ton of people use content center parts and then likely render images..

Not sure why bolts from the CC have that material/appearance though and would have thought that a more typical fastener finish would be assigned to them out of the box. 

Guess you need to do custom CC parts. (not sure if you can just change material/pick a different material when placing that CC part)

[M.Jenaban]

I can see what's happening now, you can still change the appearance but ye default comes in as a plate but others come in as semi polished.

[jtylerbc]

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@mcgyvr wrote:

yeah yuck.. I never use the CC so I've never run across this but yes it seems that Inventor uses "Plate" (looks like a hot rolled sheet finish) as the default appearance for "Steel" material and yes that color is rather dark with any of the "default" lighting styles/IBLS.. Surprised this hasn't come up more as I'm sure a ton of people use content center parts and then likely render images..

Not sure why bolts from the CC have that material/appearance though and would have thought that a more typical fastener finish would be assigned to them out of the box. 

Guess you need to do custom CC parts. (not sure if you can just change material/pick a different material when placing that CC part)

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It doesn't come up more often because "Plate" isn't the default appearance for CC hardware, unless that has changed in releases newer than what I'm working on (2021).  Based on looking at families that I know we have never customized, the out-of-the-box appearance seems to be "Semi-Polished."

Custom CC families are probably going to be the solution, but they were also most likely the cause of the problem to begin with.

[Mustang69]

Yes it is in the assembly.

other parts changes somewhat in color but not bolts

[Mustang69]

I uses CC all the time but 99% only for confirming correct length and interference with other parts.

The appearance has always bugged me but not critical for my work.
But more and more the work consists of doing nice pictures so of course then it is annoying to manually change the appearance of maybe 20 different CC parts.

Not such a big deal yet but strange anyway if Autodesk has chosen “plate” as the default color for nuts and bolts….make no sense 

it would be flat black or dark grey for untreated components chrome/zink on others 

[blandb]

So, are these default content, or custom content? If "some" are placed one way, it leads me to believe that is how it is set in the family table.

[SBix26]

I think the answer is not to make a custom CC family, but simply to change the default appearance of Steel material in the Material and Appearance library from which you're working.

Without doing any serious digging, I recall that the delivered CC families of fasteners specify material, but not appearance.  The appearance is supplied by the specified material, which is in your M & A library.

Later: I just tried this on my system and it worked (ISO 10642 is an example of a family with Steel material).  Steel by default has the Plate appearance with texture.  I just changed its appearance in the Inventor Material & Appearance library to Semi-Polished, and now when I place a fastener from the CC whose material is specified as Steel, it has the Semi-polished appearance.

FWIW, this has annoyed me for a long time, but I've just trained myself to never choose Steel, but use Steel, Mild instead.  Now it's fixed!

Hope that helps,

---

Sam B

Inventor Pro 2023.1 | Windows 10 Home 21H2

[M.Jenaban]

I agree, I have already shown an example above that appearance can easily be changed and the colour changes with it where to make a CC family there is far more work.

[blandb]

To eliminate all of this, we have NEVER used default cc out of the box. We have ALWAYS created out own custom library and copied all we need to our library. This allows us to control the display and how it reads vs. the default callout that means nothing to us. We can make any style from plain, zinc plated, yellow zinc, A325, etc in one family. So then we can change any bolt at any time. This process does not take that long. We can suppress the ones we never use and all values are controlled by family column properties. You don't need to edit each line item description. Adding columns to change the appearance and control material separately is a drop down, then mass copy paste. Lighting has no bearing on this. If anything is out of date it is because an instance is placed and is reading the current instance and not from the family table, a refresh of std content is then needed to be done to update the local version from what is in CC.

Custom CC library is not a daunting task at all...

[M.Jenaban]

If that works for you then do what suits you, just because YOU ALWAYS do it in a certain way doesn't mean it's the BEST way, I wouldn't personally BOTHER with custom family.

[blandb]

I never said you should do it this way and it was the only way, nor did I ever mention it was the best. I was giving you options as to how to over come the apparent issue the OP is having.