Inventor Materials and colors

[beercia]

I'm learning to use Inventor 2008 and 2009 and I have a question concerning materials on both versions. I notice that you have pre defined materials that you can apply to whatever part you're working on but I'm not sure how does it actually works in the program itself specially on those cases where there is material changes in parts of an assembly. The thing is: If I want to estimate the weight of a part, which is for example black finished and made of aluminum how can I show it in Inventor and be sure that the part weight is calculated correctly? I.e I see that the "black" material finish on the pull down material list in Inventor 2009 doesn't indicate what type of material is it. Also, is there any way that I can show parts as "painted" in whatever color I choose on any material I so desire?

Thanks for your help.

Carlos

 

[mcgyvr]

Material styles and color styles are different and are setup in the style library.
You define a material style (and enter their physical properties like density,etc).. then you apply a color style to it. You can have a color style of "white" and have it applied to multiple material styles if you want.
Simply changing it's "color style" from the drop down list shown in the modeling window only overrides (in that document only) the color style and not the material. Material styles are set when you go into a parts iproperties and change the "material" from the physical tab.

 

[rollupswx]

Right click on the top node of the part in the browser to change material iProperties.