3 Possibilities that I can think of:
1) Use parent child relationship (partusagelink) to add abs material as child of part. Therefore, all reports would treat it no differently than a part going into an assembly.
2) Use a "Reference" Document Relationship and have all materials as a special Document type (ie: Materials). You can then link the part to a "Materials" document and it will show up in the product structure whenever you select "Show Documents". In addition, if you create a custom "BOM Report" if you want that material to show up on the same line as the part it reflects.
3) New in 9.0(9.1) you can create a custom relationship between a part and a material. This object type can then be either a "soft Type" document or a "soft Type" part called "Material" (advantage of using Document is that a spec can be attached).
Section 18-67 of the Windchill Customizer’s Guide – “Configurable Link Tables”.
Section 13-18 of the WCBusiness Admin Guide – “Using Configurable Links”.
Here is an excerpt:
Using Configurable Links
Special link types, known as configurable links, are provided which can be used to configure and display additional relationship tables on document and part
information pages. JSP files have been provided to allow sites to implement and display these configurable link tables. The tables then display in the navigation link menus on the information page.
Configurable link tables provide a means to create and display object-to-object relationships specific to your site’s needs, in addition to those provided out-ofthe- box by your Windchill solution. These additional object-to-object relationships are determined by defining relationship constraints for the configurable link types.
The advantage of these 3 approaches over attributes, is the ability to have 2 way association between the material and part. Therefore, you can see where the material is used, use multiple materials on one part, blanket change a material's properties, etc.
