Materials and Appearances

Multiple products now share the same material and appearance libraries. The use of a unified source of material and appearance definitions provides for greater consistency for visualization, material usage, analysis, and improves quality control. Each product determines the limits to which it uses the assets.

The following table illustrates how the same material might be used by multiple products.

AutoCAD, Showcase	Inventor	Revit	Analysis / Simulation

Material and Appearance Libraries

The Material and Appearance libraries are a collection of material and appearance definitions. Some libraries are installed with Autodesk products, others are user created. You can create libraries to organize the materials and appearances you want available for use. Libraries supplied with the products are locked and when listed in the browsers are marked by an icon indicating the condition. Locked library content can be copied into a custom library where you can edit and modify as you have need.

Materials

Materials are a combination of different types of property sets referred to as assets. Inventor materials utilize two assets, physical and appearance. Together, the two assets make up an Inventor material definition. Materials are assigned to parts.

Physical properties provide information about material composition that is used for simulation, analysis, and to determine iProperties such as mass, area, volume and so on. Physical properties can be used to determine appropriate materials for your design.

Appearances

Appearances determine the visual aspects of a material and are assigned to any face, feature, part, or assembly. They can be used to show what a part or assembly might look like in an unfinished condition, an in-process condition, or a finished condition, and so on. Appearances can be used as a visual grouping tool by applying them to multiple parts or assemblies.

Appearance properties provide visual feedback for a material. This includes color, texture, bump mapping, grain, etc. All materials have appearances assigned to them. You can override those appearances to change the component look.

The Material, Appearance, Adjust, and Clear Overrides access points are:

1. Accesses the Material Browser. Use for creating and modifying materials.
2. Accesses the Appearance Browser. Use for creating and modifying appearances.
3. Activates the Adjust command. Use for modifying assigned appearances.
4. Accesses the Clear Overrides command. Use for removing appearance overrides.
5. Assigns the specified material to the selection set.
6. Assigns the specified appearance to the selection set.

For important information on migrating material styles, colors,  and appearances, refer to Migrate Color Styles to Appearances and Migrate Material Styles to Materials.