Newbie Q: What options to apply materials from existing BIP file?

[rover]

I am new to Keyshot so be gentle with me!

I have created a BIP file for an assembly I brought in from Creo and am now working on another assembly that includes the original assembly file within the scene (multiple copies of it) - I can't seem to import the materials from the original BIP file to the new scene without Keyshot just bringing in another copy of the original part, can someone please tell me what I am doing wrong?

Thank you.

[Rex]

Hey rover,

Welcome to KeyShot! You're not really doing anything "wrong". You can go about this a couple ways.

- Import original BIP and copy materials from painted up model to new model.

Or

- Open original BIP and save desired materials to your library to so you can use them in any scene.

Hope this helps!

Rex

[rover]

All the materials are from the standard library, I haven't created any new ones. What I was trying to do was avoid having to go through and reapply all the materials in the new model, doesn't Keyshot recognise that the BIP is for the same part that is used in my new assembly and therefore apply the materials as they were before?

[Rex]

Not exactly. Did you create material groupings by applying appearances in Creo? If you were importing the new assembly into the old one and used the same appearances in Creo you could select the "retain materials" option on import. In your case material templates could be your solution.

[rover]

I created shrinkwrap parts of all components of the same material in Creo, then made an assembly of these parts which I brought into Keyshot. I then applied a material to each of the parts in Keyshot.

Next I put multiple copies of the same assembly of shrinkwrapped parts into another assembly with several other sub-assemblies created in the same way. I want to be able to apply the materials from the first assembly to the same filename parts in the second assembly without having to individually apply them all over again - does that make sense? Are material templates the way to do this?

Thanks for your help.

[Rex]

Yeah that makes sense. Material templates would be the way to go. In the original .bip in which you have applied materials open the material templates dialogue and add a new template "Automatic - by parts". This will automatically populate a template that references the part names with the materials that are applied to them. Open your new scene and apply the template.

Let me know how this works for you.

Rex

[rover]

That works to a degree. Some of the shrinkwraps have 2 or 3 materials and when I apply the material template it makes all of the shrinkwrap whatever the colour of the last part within the shrinkwarp was - does that make sense? How do I stop this happening?

Thanks for your help.

[rover]

See the attached example.

The part called DEV000688 comes in with all 3 elements yellow rather than 2 black and one yellow when I apply the material template.

[Rex]

The only way for it to behave as you desire is to differentiate the names of the DEV000688 subparts in CAD i.e. DEV000688_1, DEV000688_2 etc. or to reference the material instead of the part as long as the appearances set up in CAD vary for each of those subparts.

Hope this makes sense.

[rover]

It makes sense but in creo they are a single part - it's Keyshot which changes it to three different sub components based on there being three colours in the shrinkwrap:

[Rex]

In that case you will either have to split out the three colors as separate parts so they have different names in the KeyShot scene tree to use a "material template by part" OR just reference the appearances and use "material template by material".

[rover]

OK, thanks Rex. I'll try the material template by material and see how that works out.

Thanks for your help.