Materials are applied to the geometry of models to define their physical and/or visual properties.
You can access the available materials in the Material Browser from Apps like Part Design, Assembly Design. (Bottom Bar> Tools Section> Material Browser.)
Your teacher, friends, team-mates may have already created or imported some materials.
If Materials exist in any Collaborative Space accessible to you, you will see them here.
or a material vector to a product in any app. (Formerly called materials palette).
If the materials you want to use are not already available here, you have 2 options-
1) You can install "Material Briefcases" containing sets of various predefined materials and import them into your Collaborative Space.
(Material Briefcase is a term for a container with various materials, suited for a certain type of work.)
2) You can create new materials.
Creation of Materials is highly regulated- Materials should be thoughtfully created by people in charge of this task, in order to maintain an efficient environment. This next post (Link- Why is Material Creation/Modification Regulated?) focuses on this topic:
This Post focusses on installing and importing the sets of predefined materials.
How to Avail the Predefined Materials?
Process involves 3 steps-
1) Install the Material Briefcase- (The required .3dxml files will get downloaded from the 3DEXPERIENCE Cloud Server to a folder on your computer)
Click the arrow next to your app icons, click "Install Optional Content Now"
(For example- arrow on the right side of Part Design App in Compass under My Apps),
Complete the Installation.
Optional Content includes the Material Briefcases. If you have already installed Optional Content, you will not see the "Install Optional Content Now" option. You can proceed to step 2.
2) Find the Material Briefcases in your folder-
Navigate to the folder on your computer where you have installed the Optional Content from previous step (xxx/B426_Cloud_Content), /win_b64/resources/materials
There are several .3dxml files containing material data.
3) Import the Material Briefcases you need-
Identify the Material Briefcases you need. Check the table at the end of this post to understand the contents.
Depending on your requirement, import one or more of these materials files into your Collaborative Space.
The DS-Engineering.3dxml file should be sufficient for most basic needs. Other files contain materials for performing specific types of simulations like fluid flow, metal fatigue etc.
Launch the 3DEXPERIENCE platform Native App (If you don't have a session running already 😄 !) Drag and Drop the .3dxml file into the 3DEXPERIENCE platform Native App window and complete the import.
4) You are now ready to Apply materials to your Products!
Wait for a short while for indexing to complete. Apply materials to your Products!
Which Materials are in Which Briefcase?
| Briefcases | Contents |
|---|---|
| DS-Standard.3dxml |
A set of 18 default sample materials. Each material in this briefcase includes data in the simulation domain and in the appearance domain, the drafting domain, or in both of these domains. A preview of this briefcase shows 90 objects. Every material imported from this briefcase is saved with its Family attribute set to DS-Standard. Within the simulation domain each material has two defined behaviors:
|
| DS-Engineering.3dxml |
A set of 116 materials suited to engineering apps, including 81 aluminum alloys, 22 steels, and 13 plastics. Each material imported from this briefcase has data specified in the appearance and simulation domains, and each material is saved to the database with one of the following three labels in its Family attribute: Steel, Aluminium Alloys, or Plastics. Each material contains an appearance and a simulation domain. The metals include two behaviors:
The plastics include only one behavior: Linear Elastic (Default).
|
| DS-EngineeringFluids.3dxml |
A set of 10 fluid materials suited to computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. These materials are intended for use in the Fluid Model Creation and Fluid Scenario Creation apps. The Family attribute name for each material imported from this briefcase is Fluid, and 8 of the 10 material definitions include further information about the material in the Description field. Each material includes data in the simulation domain only, and each material has one material behavior named Behavior.1.
|
| DS-ElasticFatigue.3dxml |
A set of over 300 materials suited to elastic-fatigue analysis. The Family label for each material is set to the name of a metal, like Aluminium or Steel. Only the Elastic-Fatigue behavior is defined per material in the simulation domain.
|
| DS-InjectionMolding.3dxml |
A set of over 3000 materials suited to plastic injection molding. These materials are intended for use with the Plastic Part Filling and Plastic Injection apps. The simulation domain of each material includes data for at least one Injection Molding material option.
|
| DS-FKM-Weld.3dxml |
A set of over 80 materials suited to FKM static strength and fatigue assessments.
|
| DS-VerityWeldFatigue.3dxml |
A set of materials that are not yet usable for Verity weld fatigue simulations but are available to illustrate the S-N curve data currently hard coded for steel and aluminum welds.
|
To read more about Importing Material Briefcases, Click Here.
Next Posts-
CATIA V5 to 3DEXPERIENCE Material Import [Series- Getting Started with Materials | Part-5]
Apps for Materials [Series- Getting Started with Materials | Part-4]
Why is Material Creation/Modification Regulated? [Series- Getting Started with Materials | Part-3]
Previous Post-
Materials and Types in 3DEXPERIENCE platform [Series- Getting Started with Materials | Part-1]
