Any Limits to the NX7 Material Properties List (phys_material.dat) 1

[MASawtell]

In the process of preping a NX7 phys_material.dat file for some company specific material densities and I would like to draw from the experience at EngTips about:

1) No Spaces is a Given for Name Field - but what about maximum amount of characters? Was hoping to use up to 35 characters, too much?

2) Been able to use periods, commas, dashs, percent signs, slashes, parentheses, and underscores - what about pound, more than, and less than signs?

3) Any specific Siemens weblinks that can be referenced on this? Haven't had a lot of time to deep dive GTAC libraries.

 

[JohnRBaker]

OK, this is what our experts have passed along to me.

The length of a Material name is limited to 81 characters, so your use of 35 should be OK.

As for the legal character set, the 'recommendation' is to limit these to alpha-numeric characters, underscore and hypen. While other characters will generally not be a problem, there IS an absolute restriction against the use of ", &, ', <, >, as these have special meaning when used in an XML file, which the Material names could eventually end up in when using some of the Simulation (CAE) applications.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.com/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[MASawtell]

Thanks John - this answers more than a few things on my end - if isn't a white paper/webpage on this, there should be.

 

[cowski]

Depending on how you want to use the greater than (>) and less than (<) symbols, you can try &gt; and &lt; respectively.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Yes, there are some kludgy workarounds if you REALLY NEED to use some of these verboten symbols in an XML file, but I was trying to keep it simple so I decided to not go there ;-)

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.com/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[MASawtell]

Speaking of Workarounds - I have ISO materials listed from 1 to 51 (mix of Siemens OOTB and Company items) and two Fluids listed at 101 and 102

Question - The Four Types of Materials (ISO, ORTHO, ANISO, and FLUID) are to have a specific range of numbers - or NX7 reading them linearly - but has enough program logic to decipher if it is getting Youngs_Modulus (for ISO and ORTHO) G_1_1 (for ANISO), or Mass_Density (for FLUID)?

Have to ask - because I need to 'retire' the first 51 in the ISO block - and started numbering at 52 - am I going to have to mix my ISOs and Fluids once my linear count gets to 100?

 

[JohnRBaker]

Now we're getting into an area where I've never gone before. May I suggest that you contact GTAC and have them get you in contact with a specialist in our Simulation/CAE area where they're responsible for the material libraries.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.com/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[MASawtell]

As soon as I reset my password - I will be submitting a ticket. Figure it will be an answer that should be shared with the rest of the class here.

 

[MASawtell]

John - were you aware of any changes from NX 7 to NX 7.5 on nomeclature in the phys_material.dat - because the folks at GTAC provided me what, according to them, an out of the box version of the NX 7.5 phys_material.dat file (attached to this post).

I see that Quotes, More/Less Than Signs, etc. in the Material Name are now kosher? Also, I can use ALUMINUM, ELASTOMER, etc. as Categories?

{facepalm} Is anything in the opening stanza of the .dat still valid - or was there supposed to be some sort of revision control history coded in (more over the 'The following materials were "retired" in NX2')

As for the White Paper/Webpage... looks like this thread maybe the start of one...

 

[JohnRBaker]

Actually starting with NX 7.5 we're no longer using the 'phys_material.dat' file. Granted, you can still use it for so-called legacy materials, but we've moved to an XML-based scheme (which is why the comment was made about being careful using characters which may be seen by XML as 'control' characters).

The new file where the material properties are now stored can be found in the same folder, but the name has been changed to 'physicalmateriallibrary.xml', and if you look at it you'll see that in the material name fields, that those few non-recommended characters are never used.

Now as to why GTAC sent you that supposed NX 7.5 material library file, I can't understand since OOTB it's no longer being referenced. And while we are still delivering a copy of the 'phys_material.dat' with NX 7.5, it looks nothing like the one you got a copy of, in fact the actual NX 7.5 file now has a big disclaimer at the top of the file explaining how this .dat file is NO longer the file being used by the system.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.com/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[MASawtell]

At this point, I am stuck with the phys_material.dat file. As for the future and XML... ... that will be a post (and probably another couple of versions) for another day.

 

[cmacca]

is there some helpful 'tool" to covert the materials .dat file to a materials .xml file?

NX 7.5.2.5 mp2, TC 8.3

 

[JohnRBaker]

The Material .dat file was REPLACED by the .xml file. It was NOT converted, we started over.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.com/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[MASawtell]

Actually John, that is a good question - because there are bound to be many folks that will have a need to migrate the material information that they are currently maintaining in their phys_material.dat file to the XML format, so not to have to maintain a 'legacy file' along with an active database.

 

[JohnRBaker]

You may be able to use the new Library Manager tools which were added to the Material Library function. Check out the two other menu options which you see when you're opening the 'Assign Material' menu. There is material in the NX Help files which should provide you the information you need to use these tools to either create new XML-based libraries or edit existing one.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.com/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[TechnicalConsultant]

I'm really struggling just to add a new material to the xml file. I've tried editing it in excel but it doesn't let me save it

I also tried added/creating my materials within NX but it only seems to save it for me and not site.

 

[JohnRBaker]

If you're careful you can use 'Notepad' to edit an XML file.

The best approach is to find a material record in the 'physicalmateriallibrary.xml' file similar to the material which you're adding, such as if you adding a 'plastic', find a similar 'plastic', copy and paste the section of entries covering that material and then simply edit the relevant entries.

Note that if you go this route, it may be better to created a copy of the original .xml file, make your additions/removals there, place this file in a convenient (and safe) location and then go to...

Customer Defaults -> Gateway -> Materials -> Location(s)

...and toggle on the first 'Enable' option and enter the path to the new material file, which will now be available as the 'Site' Standard for your users (you can even enforce this so that this is the only optional material file available).

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[TechnicalConsultant]

Thanks I'll give that a try, is it not possible to create new materials to the site standard file from within NX? I only seem to be able to do that for local materials.

 

[JohnRBaker]

No, there's no utility to interactively modify the default material files.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[TechnicalConsultant]

OK thanks, is it important to keep ALL the information within the XML? For example could I remove the bits below and things still work correctly?

<PropertyData property="MatlNonlinearityType">
<Data format="integer">1</Data>
</PropertyData>
<PropertyData property="YieldFunctionCriterion">
<Data format="integer">1</Data>
</PropertyData>
<PropertyData property="HardeningRule">
<Data format="integer">1</Data>
</PropertyData>
<PropertyData property="CSYSOption">
<Data format="integer">0</Data>