Locked material?

[martin99]

Hi,

I have neglected to insert the density into a couple of materials in my material database. Unfortuantly I now need the mass of some of my assemblies that incorporate this material. When trying to modify the material I get a dialogue box with ‘Cannot modify material: an application is using it in no-modify’. This implies to me that somewhere I can change it to modify. Does anybody know how I can modify this material, either in the MDS or in the open model file (these models have solved FEAs in, these are probably the things locking the material)??
An easy solution would be to duplicate the material add the property then re apply to the model. Unfortuantley this would give lots of confusing multiple ‘versions’ of the material; I would like to avoid this.

Many thanks in advance

Martin

 

[prabhusoma]

hi martin,
Your doubt is correct. you need to delete the results from Post processing task before you modify the properties of the material. You cannot modify material properties with solved FEAs.

good luck.

 

[martin99]

Many thanks,
It looks like I'll have to have multiple copies of the materials then as there are many FEAs in many model files.
I wouldn't like to think how long it would take to go through and solve them all again!!

Cheers

Martin

 

[prabhusoma]

Hi martin,
You can do analysis of a model with various materials with one FEA. You can achieve this by creating various FESTUDY s for each material. Have a look at the Manage FEA icon.

let me know if it is useful.

good luck!!!!

 

[martin99]

Hi,
I use the FEA Study quite a lot, I find it very useful. Unfortunately I would still have to duplicate the materials in the model\MDS. The FEA’s have the correct material properties in so don’t need resolving, I just want to find the mass. I think I’ll probably calculate it from the volume manually to save adding duplicate materials to the model.

Many thanks

Martin