How to speed up coloring faces?

[abdullah_elq]

Hi,

Is there a way for Inventor to quickly apply assets (colors) to faces? The best I can seem to get is 68 faces colored per second. I was hoping that there would be a way to apply the appearances to all the faces in the background, then have Inventor render them all later.

Neither of these seems to make the process any faster:

	ThisApplication.ScreenUpdating = False 
	ThisApplication.UserInterfaceManager.UserInteractionDisabled = True

Here is the code that I am using. It should work on any part file:

Sub Main()
	Dim oPartDoc As PartDocument = ThisApplication.ActiveDocument
	Dim oCompDef As PartComponentDefinition = oPartDoc.ComponentDefinition
	Dim oSB As SurfaceBody = oCompDef.SurfaceBodies(1)
	Dim oFaces As Faces = oSB.Faces
	
	Dim MyShinyRed As Asset = CreateSimpleColorAppearance(oPartDoc)
	
	Dim stopWatch As New Stopwatch()
	stopWatch.Start()
	
''	How can I speed this up?
''	-----------------------------------------------------
	For Each oFace As Face In oFaces
		oFace.Appearance = MyShinyRed
	Next
''	-----------------------------------------------------
	
	stopWatch.Stop()
	Dim ts As TimeSpan = stopWatch.Elapsed
	Dim elapsedTime As String = String.Format("{0:00}:{1:00}:{2:00}.{3:00}", ts.Hours, ts.Minutes, ts.Seconds, ts.Milliseconds / 10)
	MessageBox.Show("RunTime: " & elapsedTime & " over " & oSB.Faces.Count & " faces", Round(oSB.Faces.Count/ts.Seconds) & " Faces/Second")
	
End Sub
Function CreateSimpleColorAppearance(doc As Document) As Asset

    Dim docAssets As Assets = doc.Assets
	Dim appearance As Asset
    
	Try
		appearance = docAssets.Item("My Shiny Red Color")
	Catch
	    ' Create a new appearance asset.
	    appearance = docAssets.Add(kAssetTypeAppearance, "Generic", "MyShinyRed", "My Shiny Red Color")
	    
	    Dim tobjs As TransientObjects = ThisApplication.TransientObjects
	
	    Dim color As ColorAssetValue = appearance.Item("generic_diffuse")
	    color.Value = tobjs.CreateColor(255, 15, 15)
	End Try
	
	CreateSimpleColorAppearance = appearance
End Function

[JelteDeJong]

You might want to have a look at the article "Improving Your Program’s Performance". I think you might have some success with transactions. (see the bottom of the article)

[abdullah_elq]

Thank you. Wrapping the loop in a global transaction did help speed up the program, but not by much.

Do you have any other ideas?