RAL Colour Appearance Library for Inventor

Dutch website Inventor Wizard have created appearance libraries for Inventor containing all of the European RAL standard colours.  There are 3 flavours on offer:  generic, metallic highgloss, and metallic matte.

The site is in Dutch but can be automatically translated by Google.  The colour names shown in the appearance browser are also in Dutch, but we have converted these to English if you prefer to understand exactly which colour you are choosing when you select a RAL code.  The converted appearance library is available here (1.8mb zip)

To use:
Place the adsklib file with your Design Data, then add it to your project file's Appearance path if you wish to use it in it's entirety as a separate library.
If you would like to add some or all of the colours to an existing library, open it in your Appearance Browser then right click and Add To > your library on each colour you want to use.

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Create a Bolted Connection Library

For those of you using Inventor's Bolted Connection, it might be useful to know that there is a Templates Library feature within Bolted Connection to store away your regularly used fastener arrangements. See the steps below:

• Insert a Bolted Connection as normal, selecting the arrangements of Bolts, Nuts and Washers etc. Then click the >> button at the bottom, if it is not already. Select Add to put your arrangement into the Template Library.

How to Create a Central Material Library for 3ds Max

When you have a Material that you wish to reuse and share with your colleagues, you can save the Material to a Central Library for all users to access. See the steps below to achieve this:

• Select the material in the Material Editor and pick Get Material.