In the next part of the Inventomization Series comes a look into Colors and Textures of your models. Adding correct Colors and Textures to your model aids not only in internal collaboration, visibility, marketing, but overall clarity of your design as well. Autodesk Inventor gives us a nice swath of these to begin with, but are almost never all the ones a user needs.
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Let's first understand how color interacts in the environment of Inventor. Color and Texture is assigned first and foremost by the physical properties in the model's iProperties. This can be overridden with model's color wheel, and individual faces and features can be overridden by their properties. Here you see the order of override from greatest control to basic control.
Inventor has this structure for the best possible control of color and texture to communicate design to collaborative parties. A part may call for Mild Steel but in the assembly there are too many Mild Steel components to make heads or tails of the individual parts. This is where the Color Override comes in. Make some parts different colors for visual determination. Take that a step further and assign mating faces like colors on a feature or face level to illustrate the surface treatment or interaction better for collaborative designers. Here we have a bearing journal made of Stainless Steel with a Lavender (I'm thinking Spring) color override and a face override to show machining on a surface.
Now that we understand the importance of Color and Texture a little more, let's see how to create our own. These next steps assume you have Read/Write access to your Styles Library (next Inventomization topic). Access the Styles and Standards Editor on the Format pull down (IV2010 users will find this on the Manage Panel, Styles and Standards Tab). If you expand the Color section you will find all the colors available in the Color Override drop box commonly found on the Standard toolbar (Quick Access Toolbar for 2010). Selecting any material here will bring up the settings that make up the color style.
Now rather than talk about all of these here I have already put together a strong document on these settings which you can find here (Pay attention to the Surface Styles settings). It is important to understand the relationship between Colors found in the Style and Standards Editor and the Surface Styles found in Inventor Studio. Both of these editors utilize the same XML data in the Styles Library called Colors.xml. Changing either one will update the other. Inventor Studio grants extra control over the color style for rendering purposes where the Styles Editor is mainly for general purpose.
Creating new color styles is easy. Simply select New at the top of the Editor while on a color style closest to one you wish to create. Rename the color style and modify the settings. Now if you need a texture you simply cannot find in the existing Inventor program files try this source.
Link: CG Textures
I use it all the time to find unique and robust textures for my designs. I also am an avid googler of information as well. If you type in a keyword search for the color or texture you are looking for you can select the images section on google to get some great samplings.
Make sure you put the new texture in the correct directory so Inventor can find it quickly when you hit that Choose button in the Editor. I have been asked over the years to provide sports team color styles, and even some practical joke ones in the past.
Another noteworthy customization here is to create multiple color styles for multiple directions of your material. For instance consider creating three wood color styles but with different alignments for different orientations of the wood grain. An easy way to accomplish this is to have multiple color styles and change their rotation. But the slicker way is to create three individual texture files and name them with &X, &Y, and &Z at the end of the name before the extension. When created in the Editor, create the three color styles and assign them the corresponding texture file. This will align them with the axis in their name. Here you can see Wood Pine aligned to the Y (left) and X axes.
Link: Inventomizations: Constraint Audio
Until next time, may your textures orient in the right direction!
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