Companies frequently produce parts with various different surface treatments, finishes, and coatings. These include:
- Treatments: Galvanizing, Anodizing, Electroplating, etc.
- Finishes: Ground, Brushed, Sand-blasted, Knurled, etc.
- Coatings: Paints, epoxies, sealants, etc.
Right now, we have to use clunky workarounds to try and represent these, using View Reps, Derived Parts, and custom iProperties. It would be great to have real, built-in tools for defining, applying, representing, and documenting surface treatments.
Defining Surface Treatments:
I propose a tool for creating custom "Surface Treatment" operations. For each Surface Treatment operation, we can define its Appearance effects (change color, change reflectiveness, apply texture, etc.) and/or its surface geometry effects (add thickness, remove thickness, apply modeled knurling, etc.).
Surface Treatments could be added to a global company Surface Treatments library, to be made available to everyone in the company. Designers could also create custom ones for unique situations as necessary.
Applying and representing Surface Treatments:
Our defined Surface Treatments could be applied to individual faces or to the part as a whole (similar to Appearances now). Once applied, surface treatments would be accurately represented on the model by imposing their defined appearance and surface geometry effects on the affected surfaces. The most-recently applied treatments would override previous ones, or, if possible, combine with them (e.g. add a color tint to a previously applied texture).
If and when better part configuration functionality is added, we should be able to specify which treatment(s) are to be added at which fabrication stage. Additionally, we could specify a unique Part Number for each different "surface treatment" variation (or even simply each color variation) that we produce for a given part.
Documenting Surface Treatments:
In drawings, we could place a "Surface Treatments" note that lists the treatments applied to the entire part, in the correct order. We could also pull a "Surface Treatments" leader note on a particular face and see any special treatments applied only to that face.
If and when better part configuration functionality is added, we should be able to specify whether these notes should list all treatments, or only those added at the current fabrication stage.
I think these tools would vastly improve the experience of specifying, representing, and documenting these crucial manufacturing processes in Inventor.
If I missed any functionality that would be valuable to those who use surface treatments, or if you have an special surface treatments you would like to be supported, please add them in the comments!
