Toollbar of Materials Tool Window

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 Show Materials Properties window 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.

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.

The Create Material or Create Coating Material buttons allows 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 button allows to create the cover material based on color. After activation, the dialog for selection from the colors catalog appears.

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.

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. 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 Create Library button allows to create the new user-defined library of materials. If the library is located in any non-system folder and can be edited, it is highlighted with a yellow icon . If the library is located in the system folder, then it is read-only and is displayed with a green icon .

By default, material libraries are stored in the ...\Program\MaterialLibrary folder. If the created library was moved, changed or deleted by the user outside of the T-FLEX CAD system, then the next time the system is started after these changes, the icon will appear in the Materials window next to the changed library.

The Open Library button serves for opening already existing materials library, similar to the context menu command.

The Open T-FLEX DOCs Dataset button allows to open the T-FLEX DOCs dataset if there is integration with T-FLEX DOCs (see the corresponding section of the T-FLEX DOCs documentation).

The Open library from T-FLEX DOCs button allows to open a library from T-FLEX DOCs if there is integration with T-FLEX DOCs (see the corresponding section of the T-FLEX DOCs documentation).

The Save changes in libraries button allows to save the changes introduced into the materials library. This can be adding/removing material from the library, changing the properties of any library material, or changing the structure of the library (for example, creating folders in it).

The Create copy of material button allows to create a copy of the selected material.

The Link Materials button allows to link the materials of the document to the materials of the selected library. When you click the button, a material linking window opens, which displays all the materials in the document, the source library and the title in the source library.

The icon means that the properties of the current material differ from the properties of the material with the same name in the source library and can be updated.

The icon means that several source materials with the specified name have been found for the material, which are listed in the Name in Source column. In this case, the Update button will have no effect.

The icon means that the properties of the current material match the properties of the source material of the same name.

If the icon is absent, then the link with the material with the source has not been established.

- Refresh. Updates the material to match the source material in the source library.

- Link with Library Material. Allows to link the selected material to any material from the library. When you select an option, an additional window opens with a choice of material. It is possible to select a material from the current document, provided that this material has a source.

- Link with Same Library Materials. Allows to link a material to a material with exactly the same properties from the selected library.

- Unlink. Allows to reset the link with the source.

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