Inventor Questions

[Bill Tillman]

I made terrific progress today. Thanks again to everyone here for all the advice. A couple of issues did arise.

1. One of the part files got corrupted somehow after or during the shutdown of Inventor. An hour later when I tried to load the assembly again it reported one of the files was not useable. I thought cool, it will just go on and load the assembly file and I could remedy the problem there. But the entire assembly file refused to load and Inventor just said thank you for playing and went back to it's main screen. It's hard for me to believe that one corrupt file can knock out an entire week's worth of work. Luckily the file in question was one which Inventor had made copies of because I had copied and mirrored it several times in this assembly. I opened up the first copy file of it and resaved it as the original filename. That cured the problem but this spooks me into thinking how close I cam to throwing all that work away.

2. The last two parts I entered in the assembly before shutting down were two glass panels. I can't recall how I set it for glass but I picked the material from the pull down menu and told it to be green clear in color. I'm sure I picked glass material from some other menu as well, again so many new things coming at me I cannot recall how I did this.

The issue now is that every new part I make is transparent like glass and has a yukky rusty color to it. I know I selected glass but I never chose anything that was like this rusty orange color. And no matter how many times I reset the material and the color to default or anything else, this rusty orange color keeps repeating when I make a new part.

[JD Mather]

1. I have never had that problem.
2. First you must understand that there are Materials and there are Colors/Textures (that might be named like the materials they represent, but have no physical properties like Density...).
Materials, like Aluminum, might also be assigned a color/texture - like maybe cast, brushed or polished aluminum or maybe just "aluminum".

Now that we have established that there are both materials and colors/textures named like materials we must understand that there are several ways of assigning these materials or colors/textures (remember - two different Properties).

Material properties are normally set by right clicking on the top node of a part at the part level and selecting iProperties and then Physical and set to desired material.

Colors/textures are normally set by right clicking on the top node of a part at the part level and selecting Properties.
But colors/textures can also be set at the feature level by right clicking on the feature (for example right click on a Hole feature and set it to some shiny color/texture to cosmetically represent machined feature).
Individual face colors/textures can also be changed by right clicking on the face and selecting Properties.

All of that was at the part level.
It can also be done at the assembly level - without effecting the part at the part level.
For example, you might sell the same machine painted red, blue or green. The part level isn't painted.
But at the assembly level it is. You create each variation and then create a View Representation of each variation.

The same for materials.
You might want to run FEA (Finite Element Analysis) to test the strength of an assembly, but don't want to set the material in the part until you have made a decision on what material to use. At the assembly level you set the material (like steel or aluminum), run your test and then set your part material based on the analysis.

All of this might seem quite confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it - it all makes such logical sense in relation to the real world that you wonder how it was ever confusing. The key in Inventor is to think like you are working with real world physical parts unlike in AutoCAD where it allows you to violate all sorts of logic that isn't possible if you were doing the same thing with real parts out on the shop floor.

[Bill Tillman]

JD, thanks again. Your experience is amazing with this software and I really appreciate your replies.

I closed the Inventor project down last night and went back to my old friend AutoCAD to complete the renderings on this very massive assembly. By massive I mean there are many extruded parts, gaskets, spaces, beads of sealants, louver blades, a working rotating vent, glass, bolts, screws, the works. I recreated the entire thing in AutoCAD in about 4 hours last night. I know that I could do in in Inventor again almost as fast. Once I learned how to move and rotate the parts with the Snap Grip, things started falling into place rapidly. The trouble is I have to get these renderings to the media people for my client ASAP and AutoCAD helped me do that. Still there was one point where even my big fat i7 quad core with 12 GB of RAM and Windows 7x64 running AutoCAD 2012 x64 and nothing else, choked on a rendering and the computer just shut down. Another time I was zooming in Realistic view and AutoCAD zapped. I was constantly saving the file and never lost anything. But I am learning to shut down all other apps and no mp3's while the renderings are running.

[JD Mather]

. Once I learned how to move and rotate the parts with the Snap Grip,
... choked on a rendering and the computer just shut down...

I assume that is reference to AutoCAD technique. (learn align and 3dalign in AutoCAD)
For the "choking" problem, are you using xrefs in AutoCAD?

BTW - I went to HS in Hollywood just a bit north of you. I often return to FL for vacation and diving. Do you have a boat?

[Bill Tillman]

No boat. Down here boat stands for "bust out another thousand" and slip rental fees are outrageous. I am AOW and get my BC wet whenever I can. Some of the best diving can be found in Key Largo.

[ScottC]

JD, I have a follow up question to the color / material settings. I use inventor for cabinets and cabinet components and I would like to show the difference between a Plywood core and a Particle board core. I can do this by changing the color in the drop down settings for each part, or on the assembly, but I would like to do it through iLogic. I can Make the color and or the material change using Select Case and Set Material however anytime I type in Plywood, Wood (Grade B Plywood) or just Grade B Plywood using either logic I get an error that says it is invalid.

I am using Inventor 2012.

Do I need to set up a plywood color or material?

Thanks for your help

Scott