Two Ways to Make Life Easier in Pro/ENGINEER

Assigning different colors to Pro/ENGINEER family table instances

This tip will help you apply different colors to family table instances. Here are the steps to accomplish this simple, but useful workaround in Pro/ENGINEER.

Start by retrieving the Pro/ENGINEER model in which a family table has been previously specified. We’re going to assign red, blue and yellow colors (Figure 1) to each instance of the family table.

In a separate Pro/ENGINEER window open the first instance of the model.

Select all the surfaces (pick a surface, click right-mouse button and select Solid Surfaces) in the model.

Copy and paste the surfaces in one single feature using CTRL + C and CTRL + V key operations as shown in Figure 2. It is recommended that this copied surface is the last feature in the model tree, such that it includes all features in the model.

Assign the color (Figure 3) to the copied quilt using the Appearance Editor.

Use identical steps for the remaining instances in the model. Adjust the family table content once these steps are completed. The table content should look identical to the one shown in Figure 4.

Converting previous Pro/ENGINEER Mechanica material files to Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0 format

This tip is designed to help those who added materials to the mmatl.lib file in previous releases of Pro/ENGINEER Mechanica, and now need to convert them to Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0 format. You should not have to follow these steps if you did not customize the mmatl.lib file.

The mmatl.lib file (in previous releases located in Pro/ENGINEER Mechanica installation loadpoint/architecture/lib folder) contains all the materials that you used during simulation analyses. The content of this file can be viewed when specifying material assignments as shown in Figure 5.

Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0 materials are structured in a new file format (*.mtl extension) and can be shared between Pro/ENGINEER and Mechanica. In order to use pre-Wildfire 3.0 materials you need to convert them using Pro/ENGINEER Mechanica tools.

Create (or open) a new Pro/ENGINEER part. Move the mmatl.lib file in the current working directory. Access Mechanica functionality (use > Applications > Mechanica) and > Properties > Materials in order to access Wildfire 3.0 material library (Figure 6).

Change Look In to your current working directory and select > File > Convert pre-Wildfire 3.0 library and click the OK button until all materials are converted as shown in Figure 7. Complete this operation by clicking OK.

You can move these converted files to your material directory, or create a new directory and point Pro/ENGINEER to read these material files using the config.pro pro_material_dir option.