Inventor 2015 shading

[IronHorse]

We have used Inventor since 2006. Our customer have complained that our drawings are "shaded" If you make a cylinder in blue f.ex. On the drawing

(.IDW) the colour goes from light blue to dark blue. Inventor uses shadows and lights to make It look more 3D. But customer expect to be homogen colour since we relate material to a specific colour. We have raised this question with Autodesk, (through our CAD supplier) for 7 years but no reaction. As I understand even 2017 will have the same issue for us. I know there where some "register hack" that solved this in the past. But from 2015 and forward It does not work. We are on the spot now and maybe we have to abandon Inventor beacuse of this .

If I understand correct Solid Works and Pro Engineer can turn shading off for drawings! Any suggestion?

[MarkFlayler]

That registry hack was was specular lighting and was added as an option to your document settings in drawings. It should actually be turned off by default. In Inventor 2015 and newer you have to actually adjust the lighting style and reflection environment if you really don't want these settings.

 

If you are willing to abandon Inventor that you have been using since 2006 because a of lighting issue...I don't know really what to say except that is not the smartest idea in the world.

 

Attach a sample file showing your issue that you are experiencing and a sample from previous Inventor versions that do what you expect 2015 and newer to do. I am pretty sure I have a fix for you but it would mean changing your Styles and Standards and/or your application options to fix it. Maybe even each material in your library.

[IronHorse]

Both ourself and our CAD supplier have tried to adjust lighting style and reflection enviroment. But It only affect model not drawing. Perhaps we do something wrong? Yes to abandon Inventor is really our last measure. We have thousands of drawings in our vault.

Attached one simple example where you can see how the green and yellow colour is shading from dark to light. The colours should be as in the colour list for material. We currently use Inventor 2015 SP1 we are going to update to 2017 when It arrives in March. I drag "end of part" to top to save file size.

Tube (2).zip

[MarkFlayler]

Before I dig into this any further. Is there a reason why this is such a big deal? I mean, why can't you just have a material call out in your Parts List? Is the assembly size that large? And if so, does the small color gradient really get in the way?

 

Personally, before I start changing registry settings, lighting.xml or anything else I might examine your process a little deeper first. To be honest your issue is not the first I have heard of it being a problem, but you are in the less than 1% that sees this as a real issue.

[IronHorse]

What do you mean with "material call out" we dont use part list at all. We present material (BOM) as seperate spreadsheet. For me no problem with gradient (shaded) colors, but obiously our customers have a different opinion. They are used to read and understand AutoCad (2D) drawings with hatching and colors in layers. Now they often interpret these gradient colors as different materials.

[MarkFlayler]

Well that answers that about the Parts List. Most Inventor users will just call out the material in a Parts List on the drawing. In your example you are actually using MultiBody Parts so even that idea is out the window.

 

I had a solution working but it was VERY messy and not worth the effort due to the inconsistency that I got with it. I opened a case with Autodesk to see if they could give me a backdoor since I know a guy or two there. Until then you might want to promote this idea on the Inventor IdeaStation... the more votes it gets, the more likely it will be implemented.

 

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideastation/simple-shaded-option-for-drawing-views/idi-p/6216767

 

A little background on what is happening though...Inventor drawings use a Default Lighting styles regardless of what lighting style you choose in the modeling environment. If you modify the Lighting.xml in your Design Data you can try and force the drawing to appear differently. I played with it for about an hour but i could not find the right configuration of settings to get it just right. You have to relaunch Inventor each time you adjust a setting and create a new drawing each time to read the lighting.xml correctly. Old drawings have it cached in memory and do not update with the changes made to the Design Data folder. If you want to try some changes on your own it is the lighting style called 1:Default in the XML, just make a copy before you go adjusting around in it.

[MarkFlayler]

I got something to work with a few material settings...Not sure if it is a great method though as the models will appear dark. You would have to use Technical Illustration Visual Style all the time while modeling.

 

[MarkFlayler]

 

Here is your file as an example...saved in 2016 format.

Tube.ipt

[MarkFlayler]

This is the Technical Illustration Visual Style in 2016.

 

[MarkFlayler]

I have a case in at Autodesk to look at this further because I am only getting this to work in a migrated template of mine and not the default 2016 templates...sigh...