API object model

MaterialLibrary is an object for accessing materials in the Woodwork for Inventor material database. All materials in the database are grouped into palettes. As you know, during the installation of Woodwork for Inventor, a Woodwork for Inventor palette is created, which is the first one in the palette collection.

Palette is an object that is used to store records of individual materials (Palette Items).

PaletteItem is an entry containing a description of a fill material that does not have a colour property. This group includes the following types of materials:

PaletteItemWithColor is an entry containing a description of a fill material that also has a colour characteristic. This type of object has all the properties of palette items and in addition has a colour characteristic.  This group includes the following types of materials:

CoverPaletteItem is an entry containing a description of a cover material. This type of object has all the properties of a palette item with colour and in addition has a thickness characteristic. By the way, thickness is declared in Autodesk Inventor’s internal length units – centimeters. This group includes the following types of materials:

MaterialAssignment is an object that is used to control the actual assignment of fill material and cover material. Material information is carried by objects of palette item type.

Note that the fill material type is assigned to the Autodesk Inventor API PartDocument object, while the cover material type can be assigned to the Autodesk Inventor API Face object. Therefore, the objects such as Palette Item and Palette Item With Color are applied to the Part Document object and the Cover Palette Item is applied to the Face object.

AssignmentOptions is applied when working with Cover Palette Item. These options provide additional information about the attachment conditions for the cover material. For example, the information about the position of the cover material relative to the part model.

GrainDirection is used to control the direction of the texture of the material. Here it is possible to manipulate the texture direction of both fill material and cover material.

WorkpieceOversize is used to control the workpiece oversize. When a material is assigned to an element, its geometric characteristics are used to calculate the dimensions of the workpieces required to produce the designed part. In addition, the oversizes of these workpieces can be manipulated. Since different types of materials have different behaviour, different objects are used to service them. For example, a Veneer type material may have oversizes in length and width, while an Edge Band type material may have oversizes only in length. Therefore, we have several types of objects that allow us to control these oversizes:

FillWorkpieceOversize controls the oversizes of the fill material category to which these materials belong:

EdgeBandOversize controls the oversize of the Edge Band material.

VeneerOversize controls the oversize of Veneer type materials.

PaintWorkpieceOversize controls the quantity oversize for the Paint material type.