Colors of Materials

nicola_malagnini

Hello!

problem: when i try to assign a material, the color of the part don't change...

i also use inventor but when i assign a material the color of the part change in a 'semi realistic' mode. in onshape not.

what i'm wrong?

thanks!

NeilCooke

You have to set materials and appearances separately.

nicola_malagnini

NeilCooke said:

You have to set materials and appearances separately.

i don't know... how i can do it?

NeilCooke

Right-click a part -> assign material -or- edit appearance

nicola_malagnini

NeilCooke said:

Right-click a part -> assign material -or- edit appearance

ah. ok. sure. yes. done it. but... when i edit appereance,  colors changes rightly. but when i assign materials nothing happens

NeilCooke

You have to set materials and appearances separately.

MichaelPascoe

@nicola_malagnini Currently, in Onshape, setting the material does not change the texture of the part.

Setting the material is for getting the mechanical properties from the parts.

nicola_malagnini

MichaelPascoe said:

@nicola_malagnini Currently, in Onshape, setting the material does not change the texture of the part.

Setting the material is for getting the mechanical properties from the parts.

ok. now is clear...

for having a different texture maybe i have to use the rendering feature

MichaelPascoe

Onshape rendering is coming soon, but is not out yet. This will be what you need.
https://appstore.onshape.com/apps/Rendering/UC2WIH77IYEPHNW7RQB3HZ7JIGINWJ7PQUPVZOY=/description

nicola_malagnini

thx!

brucebartlett

It would be handy to link material to colour but what I really want first is to be able to override colour for a total assembly to simulate a painted assembly. At the moment we can only do this by changing the colour at the base level which is really frustrating if the part is used across multi-colour assemeblies. 

MichaelPascoe

@brucebartlett
Have you tried configuring the colors at the base level, then configuring those with the assembly?

brucebartlett

MichaelPascoe said:

@brucebartlett
Have you tried configuring the colors at the base level, then configuring those with the assembly?

It doesn't work very well as I use release management for my parts.  Once released I should not have to touch the part again, this really frustrates me as my assembly can't be easily set to a painted colour without doing another release or setting parts up as a config and is further compounded by release management not able to work with released assemblies. 

I just want it to work like the real world processes, raw parts have the material colour which could be set by the material type. The painted colour or finish is added at the assembly level and can be configurated or changed without affecting the base level raw parts which could be used in multiple other places. 

shawn_crocker

@brucebartlett
I'm with you 200% on that. I have a custom feature that I use to assign materials that also changes the colour(makes it fast for rendering in visualize). A part, in my mind, should represent a raw material untouched other than the things done to shape it. Finishing the part should be a separate op that runs on a separate line of revision control. Do you have an improvement request for this I can vote for?

brucebartlett

@shawn_crocker. I have brought this up before and looking forward to a solution. The part level colour change is the wrong approach for a correct engineering control structure and needs fixing. I don't know of an improvement request for this. Maybe @NeilCooke or @lougallo know.  

tim_hess427

I think I'm a little bit in the middle on this topic (if I'm understanding everybody's position). 

@brucebartlett - How would you specify paint color for parts at the assembly level? Would you just add the unpainted parts to the assembly, then add the correct color paint as an item in the BOM with instructions on how/when to apply the paint during assembly? That could all be done in onshape today, couldn't it? What would be different?

I don't think its entirely accurate to always say that a painted color or finish is applied at the assembly level. In my experience, the finish has always been defined and applied at the part level (eg. We'll buy some wheels with black paint and some wheels with silver paint. We'll have unique part numbers for each, driven by configurations or something). 

I think where I definitely agree with you, Bruce and Shawn, is that the visualization of the model should not be controlled at the part level. If I have an assembly with released parts and want to make something translucent, or use part colors to highlight parts in process documentation, I definitely don't want to up-rev a part just for that because the part's definition isn't changing - just how its visualized. That said - I also don't think that the visualization of the model and definition of the parts' finish should be linked. In my head, it's better if they're separate so you can do things like highlight parts in process documentation by changing their color or something like that.  

brucebartlett

@tim_hess427 I will often add a painted finish on parts, it's very simple works well in Onshape. I also in some situations have used an assembly just to add a finish to a part, where a part is finished at a different location to initial manufacturing. 

shawn_crocker

@tim_hess427 I agree that parts appearance definition is good now as often a part and its finish are not dependent on a higher level contain (assembly). I dislike using the name but the way SolidWorks allows overriding appearances at the assembly without changing the part does work well. I firmly believe the best way to define appearances and finishing is the ability to create a separate entity that is governed by it own versioning history. If we could create something like a feature studio but instead it was called a presentation studio. You could create Appearances, display states, explode views all things related to making a part or assembly look a certain way separated from the model itself but applied to anytime any where. You could have premade presentation features and link to them anytime you want by inserting them into a part studio or into an assembly. There could be predefined information about the appearance that automatically gets added into the parts or assemblies custom properties.

tim_hess427

@shawn_crocker - I think what you describe seems like it would be a great fit for some sort of "model-based definition" or MBD implementation. I can see this being its own tab similar to drawings, allowing you to reference specific part versions and create different "representations" that have highlights, section views, named views, and other markups that can then be used in drawings or shared as-is.