new feature to add coatings with thickness

[Anonymous]

it would be nice if instead of assigning a material, you could choose to add a coating to your part file. For instance, we powder coat all of our parts and have run into issues with tolerance stack-up for not considering the powder coat thickness. i would like to see a feature that would add an extra body to an ipt that is a thin layer that can cover the part, and could be hidden or shown on the print or the ipt. maybe with some default coatings and thicknesses? this would greatly help when we're assembling parts to see where we might have interference 

[PaulMunford]

You could do this with the thicken tool. If you would like to have your part available in both finished and unfinished states, you could use derive or an iPart.

[mrB_Young]

I like the idea, and have thought of this several years ago.
But I am wary of that by allowing paint to be turned on and off that it would provide endless headaches due to constraints being broken.
The other downside is that by adding thickness the mass will be skewed.
So if it were to be implemented it should be done with the ability to specify a secondary density for the paint.

The mass issue with dual density is something that has been requested in other places by people working with composites.
When I learned that Inventor 2024 had incorporated surface finishes I was hopeful that they had included some form of manipulating thickness in the model.  Alas ... they haven't.