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Material Library Wishlist

Max

Max

Administrator
Staff member
Hello, for v21 we are making a new GUI-based material library. No more text.

We have a lot of thought put into this already, but nothing to show publicly yet - soon. In the meantime - what do you want to see?

We're thinking about:
  • Make it easy to add/delete/modify materials
  • Make it easy to pick materials in the model vs file > properties
  • Let you favorite materials for even easier selection
  • Include more data about materials
    • Engineering data such as Poisson's ratio, etc.
    • Let you use material data in drawings
  • Associate appearance (color etc) with materials
  • Make it easy to share both individual materials and libraries of materials with other users

What's your wishlist?

Summary of Suggestions:

  • Remove material as a property of an assembly.
  • Make sure materials can link up with materials in M-Files vault.
  • Select an available Keyshot material to be associated with an AD material.
  • And no hardcoding of materials!
  • Update the help accordingly, and make sure it makes sense.
  • Set a 3D section view capping face color by material
  • Include Shrinkage as a variable, if possible.
  • Allow material properties to be used as parameter inputs in feature creation.
  • Allow material properties to be accessed from AlibreScript or/and WizoGrid.
  • Don't use scientific notation in Physical Properties
 
Last edited:
bigseb

bigseb

Alibre Super User
Max said:
Hello, for v21 we are making a new GUI-based material library. No more text.

We have a lot of thought put into this already, but nothing to show publicly yet - soon. In the meantime - what do you want to see?

We're thinking about:
  • Make it easy to add/delete/modify materials
  • Make it easy to pick materials in the model vs file > properties
  • Let you favorite materials for even easier selection
  • Include more data about materials
    • Engineering data such as Poisson's ratio, etc.
    • Let you use material data in drawings
  • Associate appearance (color etc) with materials
  • Make it easy to share both individual materials and libraries of materials with other users
Click to expand...
YES YES YES!
 
DavidJ

DavidJ

Administrator
Staff member
Update the help accordingly, and make sure it makes sense.

For example in current Materials dialogue there is no explanation of what the checkbox 'sync with part data' is for, nor any information on circumstances in which you might not want to check it.... Things like that should either be explained more clearly or perhaps removed.

We already have control over 2D section hatch - if linking appearance to material, maybe we can get to specify 3D section colour too?
 
Lew_Merrick

Lew_Merrick

Guest
Max said:
Can you be more specific?
Click to expand...
Max -- Material Property is something applied to Parts. Assemblies are made up of Parts (which should have Material Properties already assigned). It would be "better" (though quite a challenge operationally) to list component Parts having an "improper" Material assigned to them.

I am working with a company that "defaults" to "Custom" materials with a density of 1 kg/cm³ -- and then they wonder why all their "weight analysis is so far off. My argument is that "Material Properties" be expanded to include: Tensile Yield Stress, Ultimate Tensile Stress, Tensile Modulus, Tangent Modulus, and Maximum Operating Temperature (with such information becoming available to the user though an "Infor Pop-Up"). -- Lew
 
bigseb

bigseb

Alibre Super User
A material property that I could really use is shrinkage. And I would like to call up that value as a function in the scale tool.
 
Max

Max

Administrator
Staff member
bigseb said:
A material property that I could really use is shrinkage. And I would like to call up that value as a function in the scale tool.
Click to expand...

If I understand you right you want to have a material property called Shrinkage that has a number as its data, and you want to use this data as a variable input to a feature, Scale in this case?

Wondering for how many other variables this would be useful, if any.

BTW we are considering adding the following properties, among others, to an expanded default materials list:
  • Name
  • Description
  • Source
  • Physical Properties
    • Density
    • Hardness
    • Tensile Strength Ultimate and Yield
    • Poisson's ratio
    • Shear modulus
    • Shear strength
  • Electrical
    • Resistivity
  • Thermal
    • Coefficient of thermal expansion
    • Specific heat
  • Appearance
    • Diffuse color
    • Transparency value
  • Hatch (2D)
    • Pattern
    • Scale
    • Angle
    • Line weight
This list hasn't been finalized yet. We're also in the works to try to have an expanded set of around 400 common engineering materials with this data.
 
DavidJ

DavidJ

Administrator
Staff member
If adding hardness - it needs to be able to cope with the multiple hardness scales (or just be a bare number, that can be used for any scale).

Single value for most mechanical properties isn't too bad for metals - composites become much more complex. I can imagine it being useful to call out say minimum or a range of values on drawing for some mechanical properties (say if restricting tighter than a property range given in a common standard).

Would the 400 or so common materials have North American names, or be more generic?

From past experience I know this is far more complex than it seems at first glance.
 
Max

Max

Administrator
Staff member
idslk said:
Hello Max,
will we be able to reach them from AlibreScript or/and WizoGrid?
Regards
Stefan
Click to expand...

I am not sure if Script will have access to them as of v21 - I'm not too familiar with that area of Script's capabilities. However, BigSeb's use case of populating a value (e.g. Scale factor) from a value in the Material Properties list will not be available in v21 since we have so much else going on already. However it would be a good candidate for v22.
 
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