Merging two differently coloured parts but preserving outlines and colours?

ross_lloyd

I am building a touchpad model with numbered / lettered buttons. The buttons each have a different loft on the face as they need a difference in tactile sensation, which, and maybe I missed something, means I cannot simply apply text to them.

My workaround was to project the number onto a plane behind the loft, then extrude the number up to the loft face in a new colour. The end result looks beautiful, but of course as its two parts, I need a mate connector to keep them together. It appears the part will only accept one mate, and so I cannot put the button into its "home" on the front of the casing with a slider mate as I ran out of connection spots.

Is there either

a) A way to get more connection point on the one little part
b) A way to merge the extruded number with the button and make it one part, but preserve the colour of the number?

I guess one final option would be how to apply text to a curved loft face?

NeilCooke

@ross_lloyd - you can also group the two parts together so they act as one. You can reuse a mate connector as many times as you want so there shouldn't be anything preventing you using a fasten and a slider mate. 

shashank_aarya

ross_lloyd said:

Is there either

a) A way to get more connection point on the one little part

There is an option of creating mate connector in the part studio. It will allow you to create the mate connector at any position with the help of sketch. Same mate connector gets visible in assembly tab after inserting the part.

NeilCooke

@ross_lloyd - you can also group the two parts together so they act as one. You can reuse a mate connector as many times as you want so there shouldn't be anything preventing you using a fasten and a slider mate. 

3dcad

Color by feature, yes please!

@ross_lloyd Go ahead and add your vote for this feature in https://forum.onshape.com/categories/improvement-requests