Materials Window

Service window “Materials”

Special service window – “Materials” is used to work with materials. It is available even if there is no open document.

To display this window, the following commands can be used:

Keyboard	Text menu	Icon
<Alt+8>	«Customize\|Tool Windows\|Materials Window»
<3MT>	«Tools\|Materials»

This command can also be invoked by pressing in the domain of automenu or of any toolbar.

The “Materials” window is divided into three parts: current model materials, material libraries and preview.

The current model materials are displayed in the upper part of the window. By default, the list contains one element – “Steel”.

Material libraries are displayed in the middle part of the window. All opened libraries are listed here. There are three libraries that are opened by the default: Metals, Non-metals and Coatings.

Preview window is displayed in the lower part.

On the top of “Materials” window there is a special toolbar. It is used to work with materials and material libraries.

Materials Toolbar

Current Model Materials

Material Libraries

Preview

Materials Toolbar Options

To view/edit the material’s properties it is required to select the material (in the list of materials of the current model or in the library) and press the button in the upper part of the window or press . If the window is “fixed”, a separate dialog window of parameters of the selected material will appear.

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When the “Materials” window is in “floating” mode, the dialog of parameters of the selected material will appear in the right part of the “Materials” window itself. The dialog of parameters can be hidden by pressing again.

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The same dialog window can be invoked from parameters of any 3D operation or Body with the help of the button. This button is located on the «Common» tab.

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The option «Create material» allows you to create a new material. Material is created either in the current model or in the library, according to the currently selected part of the window.

The «Create color-based material» option allows us to create the cover material based on color. After activation, the dialog for selection from the colors catalog appears.

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After selection of the color the new material is assigned the same name as the selected color (for example, “RAL 1000”). After confirming color selection, in the current window of the materials library or of the model the cover material is created with the corresponding name and properties.

The flag “Apply as coating material” is automatically set for a created coating material.

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To navigate across the material libraries you can use search toolbar. With its help, the material can be found by the name or by part of the name.

For searching, you need to enter the name of material or part of its name into the text field or select the material from the drop-down list, if it already exists in the search field. After pressing <Enter> or the focus of the model tree will be placed on the desired material. Repeated pressing of <Enter> or initializes the transition to the next search result in the library. The entered name of the material if it does not yet exist must be added to the list in the text field.

The search among materials of the model is not carried out.

The remaining icons in the upper part of the “Materials” window are designed for working with the materials libraries.

The option allows us to create the new user-defined library of materials. The library is highlighted with green color , if it is located in system readonly folder. If library is located in any non-system folder and can be edited, it is highlighted with yellow icon .

The option “Open library” serves for opening already existing materials library. After activation, you need to specify a path to the library file.

The option “Save changes in libraries” allows us to save the changes introduced into the materials library.

More information about working with libraries of materials can be read below.

Materials of the Current Model

The list of the current models materials provides quick access to the most frequently used materials without searching through the libraries. It contains all materials that were used in the current document.

To identify coating materials icon is used. To identify basic materials icon is used. To identify materials that were applied previously but not in use, there is icon .

The following actions can be executed with the list of materials of the current model:

●Edit materials (The “Properties” option in the context menu);

●Add information about material into report and BOMs (The “Add to reports/Bills of materials” option in the context menu);

●Add new materials (the “Create Material” option in the context menu);

●Remove materials from the model (the “Delete” option in the context menu);

●Copy materials from the library to the list of materials of the model, from one T‑FLEX CAD document to another (the “Copy”, “Insert” options in the context menu):

●Enable/disable preview option.