New to DC's. Having a small issue

DAC_LCS

I work for a manufacturing company and I build and render prototypes of the products we sell before we produce them for initial layouts and catalog purposes. Another purpose we use the models for is proofing products to customers before they buy. Our products come in several different colors and I've just started toying with DC's to make this easier on me after the initial setup.

I've been a big group fan...never getting into components. I've finally got the time to devote to learning more about them so I started yesterday with my pieces and doing an "On Click" material change. I'm running into two things that confuse me a bit. One is that when I duplicate a piece for my model and interact with it...on some of the pieces, all instances of that piece change. On other pieces, just THAT instance changes. I used the same SET formula for each...literally...i copied and pasted. So I'm confused as to why that is. Not that big a deal though.

The other thing...the more important part that has me stumped...is how can i have a DC that is made up of 3 different parts change colors all at the same time versus having to interact with each part in this DC? For example, I have a part that is made of (3) .75" thick boards. 2 of these are 10" wide and 47 tall and the other is 6" wide and 47 tall. I want them all to change as one...not each need interacting with.

How do I do such a thing?

Trogluddite

Welcome to the forum.

Your first problem sounds like it is to do with a strange behaviour of DC's.
Any time that you change a DC property, it will become a new component definition - if you look in the component browser window, you will see the names get changed (suffixed with "#" followed by a number). Once this has happened, the part has a new independent definition within SU, and will no longer pick up changes made to the original "parent". Very annoying in my opinion.
On the other hand, if you interact with a DC with regular tools such as scaling, or painting on a new colour (i.e. not by altering a DC property), the part retains its original definition, and remains related to other copies.

There are two ways I would suggest tackling your colour problem.

SU's built in colour 'inheriting system'. Assume that, within your component, there are some parts which you painted with a colour during construction, and others which are unpainted (or painted with the 'default' colour).
When you use the paint tool to paint the whole component (i.e. you haven't double clicked to go inside it), only the unpainted parts will pick up the new colour. This 'inheriting' of colours is nested through layers of sub-components.
There's a good example of this HERE.
The great thing about this is that is does not involve messing with DC properties, and will work for regular components, and even groups.
When editing your DC equations etc. you should see that there is a nested structure to the parameters, with a heading for each group and component within the 'parent'. The trick here, is that you can make a custom attribute for the 'parent', and then use it as a 'global variable' within the attributes of the nested parts.
So in your case, you might define a 'global' attribute at the top level where the user uses a click to cycle through the colouts. The sub-assemblies would then each refer to this variable in order to set their individual attributes to follow the 'global' setting.

A useful tip is to use SU's 'auto-entry' feature to cross reference attributes.
Just start typing your equation - when you need to insert an attribute reference, simply click on its label in the DC window - a correctly formatted reference will be magically inserted into your equation - and you can then continue typing to complete your definition.

DAC_LCS

Thanks for the reply. I'll give your suggestions a shot.