Working with Inventor Surface Colors and Textures

Autodesk^® Inventor^® 2008 comes with more than 200 different surface colors and textures available to apply to your 3D models to make them look more realistic or simply make them more fun.

With a broad assortment of surface colors and textures ranging from metals like aluminum, steel, and polished chrome on one end of the spectrum to cardboard, water and dirt on the other, there are plenty of choices.


Figure 1 – Example of a Bright Chrome Surface Texture

What happens if you find yourself in a situation where you want or need a surface color or texture that isn’t available in the standard list? No problem. Inventor was developed to allow users to easily add their own image files to the Inventor surface texture database, to you can create the custom looks you want and need. Here is how that is accomplished.

Step 1) Make sure your active project allows edits to be saved to the Styles and Standards Library. Go to Files > Projects and verify that Use Style Library is set to Yes.

Figure 2 – Make sure the Inventor Project is set to allow edits to the Styles and Standards Library

Step 2) Take a digital photo of the surface you want to apply to your Inventor model and save it as a bitmap file. Copy this *.bmp file to the Inventor Textures folder located in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2008\Testures\surfaces.

You might also find a surface texture image file appropriate for your model on the Internet since there are many websites that have image files available for sharing.


Figure 3 – The Inventor Surface Texture database

Step 3) Open an Inventor part file and go to Format > Styles and Standards Editor. Expand the (+) plus sign next to Color and Click on one of the existing surface colors or textures. Click the New button to create a new color and texture and rename it to something meaningful to you. Click OK.

Step 4) Click the Choose button. Browse through the list of surface colors and textures and select the *.bmp image file you saved in the Inventor Textures folder. Use the adjustment slider bars in the dialog box to make refinements on Reflectivity, Scale and image Rotation angle. Click Save. The new surface texture is now saved and is currently applied in this part file only.


Figure 4 – Styles Library Dialog box through which New Surface Textures are added to the Inventor Surface Texture database

Step 5) To save the new surface color and texture for use on other Inventor models that you create in the future you’ll need to perform one more step. Go to Format > Save Styles to Styles Library. A dialog box will open. Make sure Save to Library? = Yes. Click OK.


Figure 5 – Saving the New Surface Texture permanently to the Styles Library

Your new surface color and texture is now available in the standard surface color and texture pull-down menu for use on any part you create in the future.


Figure 6 – Example of a New Surface Texture in use.

Have fun!