If you want to document your assemblies that more accurately reflect their final physical appearance, such as showing machined cuts on a painted weldment, this quick tip is for you.
First, assign a material to the part as normal, for example we’ll assign mild steel to the part.
Next, we’ll override the appearance to show the entire part as a machined surface. In this case, we’ll use the “Machined 02” appearance. This appearance applies to the entire body of the part, not just external faces. Meaning that any features added to the part will take on this appearance.
This next part is where we’ll assign the “painted” color. We’ll use the appearance adjuster tool to again apply overrides, however, only to the part’s faces, not the entire body. By applying the “paint” to just the faces, we get the look of machined cuts when we extrude cut through those faces.
First, start the adjust tool. Select the color to apply from the appearance drop down; in this example, we’ll use orange. You’ll notice that the mouse pointer changed from an eyedropper to a paint can. We can now select the faces on which to apply the color. Hold the control key to select all of the faces.
When adding the extrude cuts or hole features in the “Machining” environment of the weldment assembly, they cuts look more like their physical counter parts.
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