Making an assy with differnt part colors than the part studio the parts came from

nick_papageorge073

Hello,

I want to make an assy of my product with somewhat realistic colors (but not to the level of rendering). Purpose would be to take a simple screenshot to communicate to a prototype vendor what part gets painted what color. I'd call out the parts with a pantone number, so the actual color does not need to be exact.

But, I don't want to change the appearance in the part studio. I really like all the parts being different colors. That makes it easy for me during the design process. Which brings us to the question. Can I change colors in only an assembly? I checked inside onshape, and also the help section, and did not find anything. I can make a dummy assy just for this purpose if I can find a way to change the colors.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

alnis

Option 1 (more parametric and automated, but a little more complex and less visual):
You can add the colors to the parts using Evan's Color Part custom feature:

1. Add the custom feature to your toolbar (add a custom feature, not make a copy) https://cad.onshape.com/documents/d997b0ffc30f659113b10c00/
2. Refresh your project's document to have it show up
3. Add the custom feature once per each color and select parts/faces/features as appropriate (you will need to convert your colors to HSL, RGB, or hex codes)
4. Create configuration check box and configure suppression of part color features https://cad.onshape.com/help/Content/configurations.htm

You can then have the colored configuration in the assembly (unsuppressed color features) and the config without overridden colors in the part studio.

Option 2 (less parametric and more manual, but a little easier and more visual):
You can also use the built-in configuring of part properties to set the appearance.

1. Make a check box configuration
2. Go to the configured properties tab
3. Add an extra row (+ sign in dashed box towards bottom left of grid) and uncheck the check box
4. Add property dropdown -> appearance
5. Select appearances for checked and unchecked config
6. Switch to other parts with the top left dropdown in the table and configure their appearances

This approach can be great for projects where you are unlikely to need many mechanical configurations of the product. Same thing--colored config for assembly, uncolored/default colors for part studio/development.

For both of these approaches, you can make an assembly-level configuration check box that controls whether the parts are "realistic" or varied in appearance, letting you have the best of both worlds with an easy toggle.

Hope this helps!

alnis

Option 1 (more parametric and automated, but a little more complex and less visual):
You can add the colors to the parts using Evan's Color Part custom feature:

1. Add the custom feature to your toolbar (add a custom feature, not make a copy) https://cad.onshape.com/documents/d997b0ffc30f659113b10c00/
2. Refresh your project's document to have it show up
3. Add the custom feature once per each color and select parts/faces/features as appropriate (you will need to convert your colors to HSL, RGB, or hex codes)
4. Create configuration check box and configure suppression of part color features https://cad.onshape.com/help/Content/configurations.htm

You can then have the colored configuration in the assembly (unsuppressed color features) and the config without overridden colors in the part studio.

Option 2 (less parametric and more manual, but a little easier and more visual):
You can also use the built-in configuring of part properties to set the appearance.

1. Make a check box configuration
2. Go to the configured properties tab
3. Add an extra row (+ sign in dashed box towards bottom left of grid) and uncheck the check box
4. Add property dropdown -> appearance
5. Select appearances for checked and unchecked config
6. Switch to other parts with the top left dropdown in the table and configure their appearances

This approach can be great for projects where you are unlikely to need many mechanical configurations of the product. Same thing--colored config for assembly, uncolored/default colors for part studio/development.

For both of these approaches, you can make an assembly-level configuration check box that controls whether the parts are "realistic" or varied in appearance, letting you have the best of both worlds with an easy toggle.

Hope this helps!

nick_papageorge073

Thank you. I'm trying your second suggestion. I feel lost on when to check which box, and when to edit the appearance of the parts. I'm going back and forth between all the check boxes and getting more confused. Would you be so kind to take a look at this simple square/circle/triangle practice document? Thanks!

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/42b62d19df70157f40daaca8/w/8a083c67473295cdce045c92/e/3b259a06cf1779c3ac927db5?configuration=Actual_Colors=false

nick_papageorge073

Update: I played around with it more and got the second suggestion to work great. Thanks! The public link from the prior message shows it working properly now.

nick_papageorge073

Update 2: I'm trying the first suggestion now, as the second is tedious for many parts. I have the custom feature added to my toolbar, and it works ok for changing the colors of individual faces. It does not seem to work to simply change the entire part. Is it a glitch, or am I missing something? I don't see any FAQ in the custom feature. Thanks.

Alex_Kempen

Evan's custom feature should work for parts - simply select parts using the Parts query to color them in. You can also use the Invert part selection option to color every part except for the ones you've selected.

alnis

Sorry for the late reply!

If you have previously manually set a part's color, then unfortunately, I believe you have to reset its properties for that to become script-able again, which means losing the metadata associated with the part (such as the name). I might be wrong, but it's a bit annoying...

Depending on when you added the colors, it might be possible to revert to that point in time in the history tree and go from there, but this can be a bit tricky.

How many parts and documents are you working with?

nick_papageorge073

-Its a big assembly, maybe 200 parts. I only care about the external parts for the color, so about 20 parts.

-The custom feature I tried again, and it worked on some parts in the real product, but not all of them. (But did work for any face I selected). I think it has something to do with what Alnis mentioned.

-In the end, It was too much to manage, so I just changed the appearance of the 20 some external parts using the onshape built in method, and now my part studio does not look like a rainbow:(

alnis

Hmm, it can definitely be tedious for 20 parts. I'm glad you have it working now, but it's unfortunate that it doesn't look like a rainbow anymore. I wonder if a "rainbow mode" would be useful to override the part colors with unique ones temporarily while modeling etc.