Material

• To be able to use this material with TopSolid'FEA, the minimum to fill are, Density, Young's modulus, and Poisson' s ratio fields.

• To be able to use this material with TopSolid'PlasticFlow, the minimum to fill is the Cadmould material.

• Description: enter the description .It can be long and verbose.

• Category: select the material category in the drop-down list (for example : Carbon steel, Copper alloy, wood, ...).

• Part number: enter a part number if needed.

• Density: enter the density. This information has to be entered to use this material with TopSolid'FEA.

In the upper section is the appearance preview which is updated when modifying informations entered below:

• Select the specularity type. Plastics reflect the light without modifying it, while a metal colors the reflected light. The Custom type allows to define a specular color which can be useful to define a tinted mirror. For other kind of specularity types, the specularity color cannot be changed and the dialog is grayed.

• Select the Specular shininess which indicates the quantity of reflected light relative to the incident light.

• Select the specular spreading which indicates the gap between the real reflection of the light relative to the perfect light. The more the material surface is rough, the more the specular spreading is important.

• Select the reflection coefficient which indicates the quantity of light coming from other objects of the scene and reflected by the material. Contrary to the specular shininess which concerns the light reflections (primary lighting), the reflection coefficient concerns object reflections (secondary lighting).

• Select the reflection spreading angle  which indicates if the light is reflected not only in one direction, but around an average direction with some angular dispersion. Note that except for mirrors, reflecting materials do not reflect the light perfectly. The surface finish can give a frosted effect to the material. The reflection is generally small (some degrees) because above a certain value, the reflection is blurred enough and the effect is no more visible (scattering material).

• Choose the Fresnel reflection which is a physical effect that make a dielectric material (glass, plastic) fully reflective for tangential rays. Thus, a pane of glass is transparent when it is seen from the front and becomes more and more reflective and less and less transparent when you look at it sideways.

The Fresnel reflection option allows to simulate this effect for two material. When the material is transparent with a refraction factor, as the glass for example, the Fresnel reflection tends to make the object silhouette darker. When the material is opaque with a reflection coefficient, the reflection is null in front of the object but increases to the indicated value at the silhouette of the object.

• Check if the material casts or receives shadows.

• Select the specular color to define for example a tinted mirror.

• Select the diffuse color which represent base color without reflects.

• Texture: select a texture or a bump texture from the drop-down list. A texture document has to be opened. Texture has only to be used for non homogeneous material. For homogeneous material, texture fields have to be kept empty.

• Also select the transparency coefficient which indicates the quantity of lights passing through the material.

• Choose the Refractive index that indicates the deflection of the light beams when they pass through the transparent material. If this field is not filled, the material does not produce refraction effects.

• Choose refraction spreading angle if you want to get a translucence effect. In this case, the light beams are refracted around a median direction.

Enter the different hardness is needed.

Enter the different informations of the material elasticities if needed. The Young's modulus and the Poisson's ratio must be filled to be able to use this material with TopSolid'FEA.

Enter the different informations of the material plastic deformations if needed.

• Enter the material shrinkage factor if needed. This factor allows to automatically calculate the shrinkage during insertion of a part in a Split document.

• Enter the Cadmould material information to complete the Cadmould material identifier filed. It allows to map the Topsolid material with the Cadmould material database.

These two options Homogeneous and Isotropic are activated by default.

If you disable these options, it means that this material has a fiber direction (as the wood for example) that can be managed by parts that use this material.

Enter the different informations of the properties thermal if needed.