Hello,

Just wondering if anyone is having trouble using orthotropic materials with the composites analysis feature.

I'm working on a composite cylinder buckling study and am having some odd behaviour with material definition and the resulting analysis.  Even though I have defined my custom material as Linear Orthotropic and assigned all the properties, my material library still shows certain properties in red, as if they have not been defined.  When I would save the library, I received a message stating that "Not all mandatory references have been selected".  I'm wondering if this is because I have not input a value for yield strength (which is not applicable for carbon fiber lamina) or because I have not selected a reference geometry (the help files say this is not necessary for composite shells).

Most recently when I try to edit this material I get a new error message stating that saving the database failed and that the previous database has been restored.  Now I'm thinking the material database has somehow been corrupted and I need to delete it and start over.  Any suggestions on how to proceed?

Paul