Different colors on Family table parts

Ok, this is kind-of hard to explain

I know exactly what you mean! This used to be a real pain, but its dead easy in WF3 onwards.


Firtsly the enhancement in WF3 that made this possible is that when you assign a material to a part (edit/setup/material - not to be confused with changing the colour of a part) you can set an 'appearance' as well. That is the blue plastic parts can be blue and red steel parts can be red. In the generic part add all the materials you want - made up or otherwise and set an appearance for each one.


All you need to do now is set up the family table with each instance having the variable parameter PTC_MATERIAL_NAME set to whichever material you want.


This should be what you want.

blockandahole said:

Firtsly the enhancement in WF3 that made this possible is that when you assign a material to a part (edit/setup/material - not to be confused with changing the colour of a part) you can set an 'appearance' as well. That is the blue plastic parts can be blue and red steel parts can be red. In the generic part add all the materials you want - made up or otherwise and set an appearance for each one.

Click to expand...

Wont it change the property of the material e.g. density..? I would still prefer copying a surface on the component, assigh colorsand create simplified reps to include / exclude the feature. This way an additional part is not created.


I am still on WF2.

blockandahole said:

All you need to do now is set up the family table with each instance having the variable parameter PTC_MATERIAL_NAME set to whichever material you want.

Click to expand...

Hi blockandahole,


Thanks for your reply, it answered my question before I even needed to post it!


Am I right in interpreting your comment above to mean there is a built-in parameter called PTC_MATERIAL_NAME? I am looking for a way to easily identify parts that have not had materials assigned to them (through oversight), which will therefore have incorrect densities and distort the assembly mass calculations.


Thanks,
Bruce
Edited by: bruceo

I think the best way to check is to use ModelCheck. I'll see if I can set it up to check.