Multiple decals on surface, only a few appear in Studio

[Anonymous]

I am encountering a strange issue in Inventor Professional 2017 and 2019.

I am designing a panel for an instrument and placing decals on it: when I try to render the panel in Studio, only some labels appear, even though they have been all placed following the same procedure (sketch, import image, decal, select image, select surface).

As far as I can tell, the first 6-7 labels are rendered, but any further label after those does not show up in the rendering.

The two attached images show what I see in the edit menu, after the decals are applied, and then the render result, where the "PMT_POWER" numbers all disappear.

This same issue happened in a completely different panel I was working on recently, but I assumed I had messed up something. However, this time I was paying attention to the whole process and it still happened.

Can anyone provide some explanation on why this is occurring?

 

 

kelly.young has embedded your image for clarity.

[schmidmi]

Hello @Anonymous - are you able to provide the model?  I've also seen some experience with decals, but without the model, it will be hard to diagnose the problem.

Thanks!

[mcgyvr]

Its a bug or really "limitation" in Inventor.. It only allows up to 7 decals to be used/rendered in studio..

One of a few reasons I don't use decals and instead use extruded sketch text/shapes to show silkscreening in my products..

I place all the text then extrude .001" or whatever and give it a white color for white ink,etc..

[schmidmi]

Hi @mcgyvr - you could be right, but I have not heard of this bug/limitation.  I just tried with a very simple model (cube) and a number of sketches/images/decals (9) and all came through in the Inventor Studio render.

I'm currently running 2019...

[mcgyvr]

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@schmidmi wrote:

Hi @mcgyvr - you could be right, but I have not heard of this bug/limitation.  I just tried with a very simple model (cube) and a number of sketches/images/decals (9) and all came through in the Inventor Studio render.

I'm currently running 2019...

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@schmidmi I just tried it in 2018 (don't have 2019 yet) and sure enough as soon as I got to 7 they stopped displaying after that..

Its too coincidental that such a test yields the same results..

Studio also has a limitation on the number of spotlights I believe..

(part on left.. rendered on right.. Notice only 7 vs 9 decals...)

[schmidmi · Accepted solution]

Hi @mcgyvr I am now able to reproduce the problem.  When I initially did this with 2019, I had a model where the (9) decals spanned across two faces:

After seeing your screenshot, I moved them all over to the same face, and Studio does indeed give up after 7 decals.

I did also determine that splitting the face was not enough to work around the issue.  Splitting the body, does though:

However, I'm not sure this at all ideal in most situations.  I will get a bug submitted, if one isn't already in the system.

Thanks!

[mcgyvr]

@schmidmi Nice troubleshooting.. 

Thats why having the files (or at least an image) in this case was good.. That whole "image...thousand words" saying and all..

[schmidmi]

I found an open defect, I will link it together with this post.

Another note - this is also an issue for ray-tracing, not just Inventor Studio.

[mcgyvr]

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@schmidmi wrote:

I found an open defect, I will link it together with this post.

Another note - this is also an issue for ray-tracing, not just Inventor Studio.

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yep.. sure enough.. Same limit there..

Like I said before I really suggest they use extrusions in this case vs decals.. 

I tried hard to use/like decals for silkscreening/marking applications but it kept falling short for multiple reasons..

I've very happy using .001" high extrusions with text/shapes

[Anonymous]

Hi,

thank you all for the replies and confirmation it is a bug/limitation in Inventor.

It was really driving me insane.

Also, apologies for not providing a model.

I was aware of the suggestion to use extrusion instead of decals but the thing is, sometimes I have to work with designs where I already have the label "image". Spending time re-tracing the image as a sketch would not be very time efficient. However, for simple text labels I will use the extrusion method in the future.