push material property to derived

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

How do I push material properties from a base part to a derived ?  Situation is this. We have a part that is used to prevent tampering with the lock on our door profiles. This part is made out of a base profile in aluminium. So in fabrication we first extrude the base profile and then take it to the workshop to drill chamfered, deep holes at regular intervals. This is the part that our customers buy. So I have 2 drawings : one for the base profile and one to define the part that we are producing in the workshop. All drawings need to have material defined. I want the finished part to inherit whatever alloy that was used for the base profile.

In Inventor you can assign material in each part file. In this case that doesn't make sense because you obviously can't change the material of the profile by drilling holes in it. So how do you force the derived to "listen" to the material properties of the base part ?

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Alex,

These are good points indeed. Derive was designed to focus on geometry derivation, not total replication of the source part. Unfortunately, there isn't an option to derive the material style from source. But, it is technically doable. It is because there are exceptions to the rule. iPart members does carry iPart factory's material or the material on the table. And, for Sheet Metal parts, Sheet Metal rule (material included) in the source can be linked to the derived part. I would say technically it is doable but it has not bee done for general derive parts.

Many thanks!

[SBix26]

So, based on Johnson's input, one workaround would be to make these parts sheetmetal even if they don't have any sheetmetal features, so that they can inherit the sheetmetal rule, which includes the material.

Sam B

Inventor Professional 2018.2.3
Windows 7 SP1

[kelly.young]

@SBix26 I tried it out, before Derive is selected you have to Convert To Sheet Metal or start the part as a Sheet Metal Template.

It keeps the material, but not the appearance. 

Please select the Accept as Solution button if a post solves your issue or answers your question.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Guys,

Although converting to sheet metal part helps in this case, I personally do not think this is a viable workaround. There is no reason why the user has to convert any part to a sheet metal part. It does not make logical sense. I think it is better to keep the part as is and manually change the derive part material (or use iLogic rule to do that).

Many thanks!

[IgorMir]

Well, the material in iParts is assigned by introducing a Material column in the Author table. It is a bit convoluted, but it has been like that for years.

Cheers,

Igor.

johnsonshiue wrote:

Hi Alex,

 iPart members does carry iPart factory's material or the material on the table.

[Anonymous]

Sorry that all your help suggestions are really valuable inputs but they cannot really be acceptable as "solution".

There is no reason why 'material' would not be an exposed property in all of the environments. It is present, you can even attach a leader in drawing to any component and read what material it has assigned to it. But I found no standard way of getting the material to be exported from a part to a derived. Kinda proves my POV that Inventor is not really ready for Virtual Manufacturing.

We're still on 2014 so whatever I check may no longer be true. Is there for instance an "intelligent" leader yet that allows you to 'dig' into objects ?  Meaning that you attach a leader to an assembly in a drawing and have a level indicator to get the properties of the big assembly, the subassemblies, the parts, the origin parts (if deriveds present)  ?  Inventor should have parts behaving as parts and not as 3D geometry. iParts will share their material to their children. But you can change the material of the children. While this might be usefull in some cases (*), there are no rules attached. You get no warning that there is an override in the child, you can't set a forbidding flag in the ruling iPart.

(*) You can make a iPart-cabinet in any wood you choose but you can't turn a steel beam into aluminium by changing its length.

[kelly.young]

Hello @Anonymous does this customization post help you out?

derived part material

Here is an idea link that is similar, gave it a vote:

Derive component command copy/link original part materials.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if a post solves your issue or answers your question.

[Anonymous]

Hi Kelly,

I believe that I understand what is written in the code. The only thing I'm missing is how to apply it intelligently in an Inventor file. Done some programming but very little in the context of add-in to a program. Ideally this code would be a triggered rule in all files : "check if this file is derived from another and if so copy the material from the source". But I could live with this being a rule to add manually to any file that needs it.

So if you could shortly point me into "how", I would be more than happy.

Thanks,

Alex

[bradeneuropeArthur]

See please one idea in my signature regarding derived properties.

[NachoShaw]

Would this be possible under the following scenario?

Collect material and store it in a variable
Collect appearance and store it in a variable
Derive the part as a new part
Apply the material
Apply the appearance
Save

Make you do DO NOT use the model appearance when deriving