How to Material Library, create and add materials | Autodesk Inventor

hey baby hello sir okay I'm just sitting here with your friend watching a little TV hello and thank you for coming along to the next video in my inventor tips and tricks series this isn't so much a tip or a trick this is more of a mini condensed training courses condensed as I can possibly make it because I've had a couple of requests for this for the it's all about as you've seen on screen here it's all to do with the not so new but new to a lot of people material library and appearance libraries within in vendor in invent 2013 Autodesk sort of rocked everyone's world in a negative way and introduced this new way of managing materials and appearances and it caused absolute havoc it caused chaos when it was first introduced and I wanted what I wanted I want to just defend all a desk for a bit here because I've got it on good authority from someone very high up within the product development team with an Autodesk who I'm not going to give his name out because somebody will figure out his email address from that and bombard and with their own personal problems so but having basically the inventor team the development team were given very short notice very a very limited amount of time to implement this new material in appearance browser prior to the launch of event 2013 someone I guess quite high up in the corporate structure with an Autodesk said we want to make all of our orders product portfolio anything that uses materials max showcase etc we want to have a uniformed interface between all of those products for managing and transferring materials and appearances kind of a good and in theory a best intention kind of idea but the invalid team were given very limited time to implement that into 2013 before the launch and it just did not go very well they did the best job they could but it did not go very well but over over time the find out most if not all of the problems with it and what were left with is still quite clunky interface to navigate around hence why I need to create a video like this and hopefully it helps you if you're watching this hopefully you're watching this because you do need a bit of help with it so that's the background so I've created this video and in defensive Autodesk just didn't want to make it sound like this is a you know some sort of attack on on their work in any way because it's not I understand where they came from when they had to implement this so another precursor to this video whoever you are watching this video I don't know where you stand currently with your materials and appearances there could be many different people in many different scenarios you might have an existing library from an old version of invented that you need to migrate you might have already got a new library and you're not sure how to manage it you might just need to know where to start from scratch I can't unfortunately implement all those different scenarios into one video it would take far too long so I'm going to start from absolute scratch literally from scratch on a basic blank default platform and show you how to create a new library how to add materials into it and how it all works how you know what I think the most important part about this is how to get your head around it once you get your head around what the dialog boxes mean you can then kind of apply that t-to wherever you are in your scenario in your situation so literally starting from scratch I'm gonna create a new project with an inventor I'm going to call this just submit basically your materials something like that and save it in the default workspace area where my project is doesn't really matter at all for the purposes of this little course what I'm also going to do is leave the file paths in the project directory all by default so for example template design data going to leave them all default in your if you're doing this for a drawing office the chances are the best practice would be to put those locations like templates and design data put them on a network location or in a vault it's a different discussion for a different day but in a drawing office when they were basically when you've got more than one person that needs to work on this data set you need to have it centralized so everyone can access it not just you okay so what the first thing we're going to do what we need to do is to create a new library now the old inventor libraries was all XML based and it was all located within your design data folder the materials were sort of bundled into this area now invent the 2013 the material library's changed from an XML format to this ad SK lib you can see it just on that tooltip that's popped up there the library file is an ad SK lib file so we need what yeah what the intention of this video is to create our own new ad SK Lib library and add our raw materials to it with the idea being that that's the library that we're going to use now unfortunately you can't create a new library from within this projects dialog box we need to go into another environment to do that but first thing to do is just to make a note of where your design data folder is because although it doesn't mix in with this design data folder anymore we want to keep the library in the same place as this as to not make we don't want you know everything to be all over the place we want to centralize things as best as possible so whilst you've got this project dialog box open just one left click this design data area this design data file folder and highlight all of that folder and just copy that to the clipboard now obviously I'm hoping that if this is you and you draw an office this is a network location but we basically just know where your design data folder is so I've copied up the clipboard save your project and then done and we're going to open up a new IP T file Reeth so now that we're in an IP T we need to go into the material browser so on the top quick access toolbar you click this little speculum moon looking globe button here and this launches the material browser this is the dialog box that has got a lot of people confused and yeah I kind of get where you're coming from because I remember what it was like when I first looked at this and I was just like Jesus Christ what is this and why but anyway we'll not dwell on that too much so the first thing we need to do is to create our own library it will be our own personal custom library and it will start empty to do that the very bottom left of this dialog box you click this little folder with the spider on it and then you create a new library now if you've copied the path to the clipboard from the design data folder in the projects area just paste that folder into here and that should take it at the very top level of your company style library and you should see all these folders now we're going to put the custom library in the materials folder it doesn't have to be in here but it makes sense if it is because that's where most people would look you know maybe you leave the company and someone needs to kind of follow up and understand what you've done where you put the material library this should be the first place they look and then give your library and name so I'm going to just make a kumquat co library whatever just whatever your company name is and call that your library file so we're going to end up with a file called kumquat Co library a dsk Lib and then save that in there Oh brilliant is probably because I've already created one with that name and it doesn't want me to reuse the name so I'm just going to call this on what library and it should be it yep alright so once we've got the library created you should see no materials in the library but then if you click one of the other like these Autodesk material library and invent material library these are Autodesk's kind of gift to you the standard libraries that you get out the box which are fine to a certain degree but they're not really they are professional but you know you do want a bit of customization there of the case material names that sort of stuff so we need to we need to move away from these and start using our own custom library ok how do we get materials from one library into the earth right okay well there's a number of different ways you can do this that the most the most efficient way of doing it is to follow this work for now let's just use the scenario we'll let's say we're going to create a new metal we're going to create a new grade of stainless steel so we're going to go into the inventor material library scroll down till we get the stainless steel and I just want to make another point about this dialog box right this area up here this blank area up here these are the materials that are currently stored within the part file that you have opened in the background alright down below these are the materials in the library these are the materials in the document so at the moment we have no materials in our document other than one called generic which I guess is just a basic default nothing material which has to exist so the power file can exist so we're going to copy a material from the standard inventor library into the document library so we're going to right click on stainless steel and then we're going to add it to the document materials I'm not going to add it straight into our library and the reason for that will become apparent in a second we're going to add it to the document materials so that transfers the material from library into our document materials now we can now use the stainless steel in the part file it'll appear on the drop-down list however it won't appear on any other part file and it won't appear on anybody else's computer because that material is just within this one part that we have open now in this session ok so now that the documents in the material we need to do a few changes to it like rename it change a few properties maybe change the appearance of it whatever you want to do to it so when I right-click on that material and then we're going to edit it now the reason I didn't transfer the materials straight into our library is we can't do that but you for whatever reason I don't know why you can't edit a material directly in the library it has to be in the document for you to edit the material I really I really don't have an answer as to why that's the case I'm assuming it's due to readwrite issues perhaps someone might be using the material so we edited directly in the library it might cause problems the material might be locked I don't know it doesn't really matter so we're going to right click on the material in the document and then edit it and this brings up another very strange-looking dialog box which I guess has a lot of people confused and it's confused mix it doesn't bloody appeared right click and edit now you come up the second time only I'm brilliant thank you very much very kindly so we've got a we get this material editor dialog box appear and to be honest with you the majority of these properties mean absolutely nothing you literally mean absolutely nothing product information cost URL keynote for all of this stuff means Jack or absolutely nothing you can't reference it in two drawings you can't reference them in the vault they're just meaningless information and you might be able to search on them perhaps I don't even know if you can do that but you can type in them as much as you want you put as many keywords in as you want it doesn't let you're wasting your time the most important part is the name and the description so people understand what material it is they're selecting so let's just say we're going to create a material called I don't know make sure it's of a case because you know this can end up on a drawing so you'd want that to be another case stainless steel let's just say grade a for 80 copy that at the clipboard so I'm not typing it over and over again and then just put that in the description and the rest of all this information like I said is completely irrelevant okay so that's the identity of the material next thing we're going to jump to is the physical properties of the material okay the physical properties might not look like mine look here you might have different units depending on the area of the planet which you reside and you might need to see different units in here how do you change the units though what if you don't recognize what the units are and you work in a different unit right well you can't change the units from within this dialogue box this is part of the biggest the overall kind of wide problem with the dialogue of the whole material browser it's not very intuitive if you want to change these units just hit apply so save what we've just done cancel out the dialogue box come into this folder again with a spanner and then set the display units to be whatever you think they should be for you now currently I'm working in metric CGS you might work in English you know inches pounds mass psi I don't know but that's why you set your units okay so we're just going to okay that and come back into this material go back to the physical tab for the name just going to paste in that name again I'm not too sure why name has to be in here multiple times but let's just let's just do it anyway the description again just paste that in there keywords again this starts to become all completely stuff and then should this you know I don't know what you've copied and I don't know what you're creating but if the you know the the density the density tends to be the most important property that's what ultimately sets the mass of the model that you're creating if you're going to do an FBA then you might need to start changing like yield strength and and all the rest of those properties but if you're quite happy enough with the properties leave them as they are if you want to change them go ahead and change them and then hit apply ok for the appearance this is where we set what the material looks like what texture it gets now I'd love to go through how to you know import your own textures from bitmaps and stuff like that I'm going to leave that for another video because I would end up going off on a tangent create another ten minute segment and most people may not want to do that with inventor in this new material library you do get a huge catalog of images to play around with so even you might find that most appearances that you need are in the standard library there's probably a lot more in there than you actually first realize but you know I will create another video if put a comment in the video if you do genuinely want to see a video just on important your own custom textures and all that I'll get I'll get on that quick time all right so at the moment we're just using a standard sort of silvery gray appearance so we're going to change that so down at the bottom you want to click this open closes asset browser button here and then navigate through this basic this is all the textures you've got to play with this hundreds of them and there's even more than this there's a whole load of textures which aren't even in this dialog box which are kind of hidden away in you on your PC which again that's that's the thing for another video so this is the Autodesk appearance library you don't wanna be in the material libraries you want to be in the appearance library and let's just scroll down and choose something that's kind of metal looking but not to sort of bizarre let's go for Chrome just so you can see that you know it's definitely going to change what we've done still realizing recognize that something exactly happened let's go for chrome polish black and select that material by hitting this little left and right arrow here on the right hand side and it's not gonna let us put it in there chrome polish black yep it's done okay it's just being it's being bizarre doing strange things but it's done it chrome polished black yeah blah blah blah you know the rest of these properties here again I thought you could spend hours going through what all this means but you know we don't really need to change them chrome is chrome hit apply and then hit OK well actually don't know fix upgrades out thanks all that's because that that's a really consistent with the rest of your dialogue boxes and then click cancel right so that's the material created and saved just in this document again important to realize and to understand at this point that material and that texture that we've changed and applied the material is only in this part nobody else is going to see that just to confirm that I know I've said it but just to confirm it I'm going to create a new part file I'm going to go to the materials and my stainless steel grade a 480 is not selectable because like I said again and again again but it's really important to understand that it is just in this part the lab couch which I was making earlier on there it is there so it's just in this part right so how do we get that part out sorry how do we get that material into our library so that everyone can start using it well this is the easy bit right-click on that material in the document add to your come quite Lively that's it down here this is like a browser for all the libraries that you've got currently loaded in your project select the drop down arrow select kumquat library and you should see your stainless steel a 480 light material we'll just add it into this library and that's it done ok let's test this I shut down the part file no I don't want to save it click new new brand new part and there it is stainless steel a 480 that's the only material selected because currently the kumquat library is the only one selected if you want to then go and use a material from another library I want the standard once you step over this library you'll then get access to all the other materials without the without the stainless steel if already because that is in the kumquat library then right so that's how you do it if you want to start adding a library or adding more materials to that library maybe you want to say right well you know I'm happy enough with having this customized stainless steel but I also want to give all my staff access to all the other invented materials where you can just wait and not change them you can say oh ok well we use this grade of aluminium so we're gonna add that at the kumquat library wouldn't go down to you know copper copper copper so that's out that of the kumquat library you know so on and so forth and then they'll appear in that kumquat library ok well shut that down we'll shut the park down we'll come into another new IPT just to confirm that everything's worked and there you go kumquat library selected so we've now got copper the aluminium and the stainless steel ok how do you change the materials right once you've added a material into your custom library how do you change it well like I said you can't right-click on a material and edit it directly in your material library it's just not possible so in order to change any of the properties in these custom materials you've got to right-click on it you've got to then add it to the document materials you've got to then go through the whole edit procedure change it all again change you know if you want to change the appearance you can do that I've going to change the physical properties you can do that once that's done you're then right click Add to the kumquat library and then it'll override the material that's in the library and update it with your changes so that's how you update a material that's in your library okay let's shut this down what's the next step well that's pretty much it if you only want your users to access your customer view what you would do is you've got your project file come to the material libraries and first things first add your kumquat library news we're going to right click add a library I've still got that path posted noop brilliant so if I go to downloads add some documents ISM documents inventor materials notes not ah bloody ell it's the design data path isn't it yeah you've got to go to your design data pathway you save the material a dsk lead files are done there this is the yeah this is the pain in the last part about with all other library browse to the design data folder materials and then I come to our library say that same again well we didn't really create any custom appearances so don't really need to add it to the appearance library but I suppose you can do just paste that into there go into materials at the compile library and then save that so we're going to leave the invented material library as the default appearance library but for material libraries we're going to right-click on the kumquat library and then make that the active library so every time someone starts apart or opens apart file a legacy part file in in vendor the kumquat library will always be the active material drop-down list that they see if you don't want anybody to access any of the old material libraries you can remove them completely from the material library and then when they start working an inventor they'll only have the kumquat library and they'll only have the materials in that library oh right I'm going to leave that there because I don't know how long I've been going on for but it's probably a bit too long already and I've only covered the very basics of the material library so in the comments if you need to see how to add your own textures into appearances I'm more than happy to do that I'm only going to do those enough people wanted to look at that and want to learn that because you know it's a very nice area but that's how you create material library how you add to it and how you change a material library don't forget make sure that material library is in your design data folder and that the design data folder is in a central location on the network because if it's in your My Documents folder another person in your office isn't going to be able to see that design data folder so it needs to be stored somewhere on a network share on a mounted drive somewhere ok thank you very much I hope that was helpful sorry for going on a bit too much but you know it is a sort of a training course so that's the nature of the beast if you liked the video please press the like if you want to see more videos please subscribe and thank you again so much to everybody that subscribed so far put some comments in the video and until next time thank you very much and I will see

Channel: Tech3D

Views: 55,395

Keywords: Autodesk, Inventor, 2013, 2014, 2015, Materials, Styles, Textures, Images, Style Library, Material Library, Appearances, Templates, Metal, Steel, Chrome, 3D, Model, Modelling, ADSKLIB, XML, Solidworks, training, guide, tutorial, tips, trick, tricks

Id: yE1-ER3uYQk

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 22 2014