Question
Use of Material Files
WF4 & WF5
I'd like some feedback on how folks are using material files in Pro/E.
At this point, we do not use any material files in our models for a
variety of reasons. I'm curious how you have overcome these significant
issues:
1. There's no obvious indication that a material is assigned to a
model. The only way I've seen to tell (outside of the materials dialog)
is that a PTC_MATERIAL_NAME parameter is created and is restricted to
the value defined in the file.
2. While the material file will set mass properties values, there's
nothing to prevent a user from changing those values. So, if I assign
6061 aluminum to my part, a user can override the density to make it as
heavy as lead and there is no warning and that PTC_MATERIAL_NAME
parameter still says 6061 and the materials dialog still shows that 6061
is assigned. Again, since there's no indication that a material was
assigned to the part, so there's no way for the user to know ahead of
time.
I guess a secondary question would be what value to I get from using
them. I know that I need them for running analysis in Mechanica, but
beyond that I'm not sure what I'd gain. We are not a manufacturing
organization with defined materials in house that we want to use,
although we might get such restrictions from our clients.
This was brought up because a user completed Mechanica training and
wondered about our material library, which is only what we got from PTC.
Doug Schaefer
This thread is inactive and closed by the PTC Community Management Team. If you would like to provide a reply and re-open this thread, please notify the moderator and reference the thread. You may also use "Start a topic" button to ask a new question. Please be sure to include what version of the PTC product you are using so another community member knowledgeable about your version may be able to assist.
I'd like some feedback on how folks are using material files in Pro/E.
At this point, we do not use any material files in our models for a
variety of reasons. I'm curious how you have overcome these significant
issues:
1. There's no obvious indication that a material is assigned to a
model. The only way I've seen to tell (outside of the materials dialog)
is that a PTC_MATERIAL_NAME parameter is created and is restricted to
the value defined in the file.
2. While the material file will set mass properties values, there's
nothing to prevent a user from changing those values. So, if I assign
6061 aluminum to my part, a user can override the density to make it as
heavy as lead and there is no warning and that PTC_MATERIAL_NAME
parameter still says 6061 and the materials dialog still shows that 6061
is assigned. Again, since there's no indication that a material was
assigned to the part, so there's no way for the user to know ahead of
time.
I guess a secondary question would be what value to I get from using
them. I know that I need them for running analysis in Mechanica, but
beyond that I'm not sure what I'd gain. We are not a manufacturing
organization with defined materials in house that we want to use,
although we might get such restrictions from our clients.
This was brought up because a user completed Mechanica training and
wondered about our material library, which is only what we got from PTC.
Doug Schaefer
This thread is inactive and closed by the PTC Community Management Team. If you would like to provide a reply and re-open this thread, please notify the moderator and reference the thread. You may also use "Start a topic" button to ask a new question. Please be sure to include what version of the PTC product you are using so another community member knowledgeable about your version may be able to assist.