Material

 

 

Links/Videos:

 

 

This document allows you to define all the features of a given material.

 

Creation stages / Use:

 

Create a new document by click the icon, then select the icon in Advanced tab.

 

  1. Material has to be defined in several rubrics explained below:

  2. Save and check in the document.

 

 

  • 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.

 

 

It is possible to use parameters in many fields, which can then be drive in a Family document.

 

 

Properties tab :

 

 

  • 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.

  • Hatching: this option allows to assign a user hatching to the material (hatching which will be used in a cross section view of a drafting for example).

 

 

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 cutting force and cutting force increment if needed.

 

 

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 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.

 

 

Enter the different informations of the properties thermal if needed.

 

 If the material has no thermal properties defined, TopSolid takes values of table below :   

Category

Conductivity

W/m °K

Specific heat

J/Kg K

Thermal coefficient

X 10e-7 %/K
Ceramic
Composite
Gas
Graphite
High alloy steel
Liquid
Magnesium alloy
Nickel alloy
Thermal insulator
Tin alloy
Unclassified
Unclassified alloy

For this categories, there is no value by default. We must define mechanical and thermal characteristics.
 
Aluminium alloy

240

920

2.5
Carbon steel

50

500

1
Cast iron

80

500

1.1
Concrete

1.30

790

1.0
Copper alloy

390

370

1.8
Elastomer

0.22

1400

28
Glass

0.055

830

0.9
Lead alloy

35

120

2.9
Low alloy steel

50

500

1
Mineral

1

620

1.18
Precious alloy

320

120

1.4
Pure element

320

120

1.4
Reinforced Concrete

1.70

790

1.0
Stainless steel

26

500

1.5
Thermoplastic polymer

0.2

1200

6.8
Thermoset polymer

0.2

1500

4
Titanium alloy

20

580

1.3
Wood

0.16

1600

3.5
Zinc alloy

120

370

2.6
  

 

 

Appearance tab:

 

 

  • General options:

    • Scale: this option allows to change the size of the texture from a given scale factor.

    • Rotation: this option allows to change the orientation of the texture from a given angle.

    • Receive shadows: this option allows to specify that the material can receive shadows.

    • Cast shadows: this option allows to specify that the material can cast shadows.

    • Fresnel reflection (for PBR materials only): 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.

Without Fresnel reflection

With Fresnel reflection

    • Transparent reflection (for PBR materials only): this option allows you to indicate whether the totally transparent areas of a texture should still reflect light or not.

- A material with glazed parts must reflect light where it is transparent (because there is material).

- A material representing mesh does not reflect light where it is transparent (because there is no material).

    • Default texture mapping: this option allows to define the disposition of the texture on the shape.

- None: no texture mapping.

- Inherited: the mapping used is the one specified in the texture definition document.

- Planar: the image is plated on the object regarding a planar projection to be able to minimize image deformations. Parameters of this category are the same than Auto-axis category.

- Auto-axis: the image is plated on the object in the 3 orthogonal directions by minimized image deformations. The parameters of this category are the same than Planar category.

- Cylindrical: the image is rolled around a cylindrical object to be able to minimize image deformations. The width of the image corresponds to the rolling, the height will be applied regarding the cylinder height.

- Spherical: the image is rolled around a spherical object to be able to minimize image deformations. The width and the height correspond to the rolling on the sphere.

- Edge: it is to be preferred for wood applications to add textures on the edges. This mapping allows to keep the same orientation along the edge faces. Recommended for plane faces and cylindrical faces mainly.

- Parametric: this mode should be used when working with FBX files with attached textures. TopSolid will then use the mapping defined in the FBX model which specifies the correspondence of each of the texture points on the polyhedron..

 

  • Options for Redway model:

    • Texture: for non-homogeneous materials, you can associate a texture to them in this drop-down list. For homogeneous materials, the texture field should remain empty. Depending on the type of Redway texture used, different settings can be proposed:

- Transparency color.

- Index of refraction: 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.

No refraction

Refraction index 1.5

 

- Diffuse color: represents the base color independently of the reflections.

- Reflection color.

 

  • Options for PBR model (Physical Based Rendering):

 

  • This material is created from several maps (Albedo, Roughness, Metalness ,...) which can be defined manually (from a color or a value) or with a texture document.

  • Different Internet resources (AmbientCG, Adobe Substance 3D Assets, Poliigon, ...) propose the download of PBR materials in which you can find the different images allowing to create the textures to be used in each map (you have to create as many textures as there are maps/images available in the downloaded PBR material). It is also necessary to take care to give an identical width of texture for each of the textures of a given material.

  • This first level of definition can be enriched with the graph editor of the map.

 

  • 3 main maps to define a PBR material:

  • Albedo: diffuse color of the material.

  • Roughness: is used to define the degree of roughness/mattness or gloss/glossiness. The higher the value value is important, the more the material will be mat (no reflection if roughness at 100%). The lower the value, the more brilliant the material will be.

  • Metalness: allows to define if the material is metallic (iron, copper, gold, ...) or dielectric (glass, ceramic, plastic, ...). Generally the value will be 100% or 0% if the material is metallic or non-metallic.

Link between metalness and roughness

 

 

  • Optional maps for PBR material definition. Preferred when the material is created from textures after downloading from Internet resources:

  • Normal: allows to give relief to the material as if it was a real geometry (irregularity of a leather for example). Depending on the Internet resources, it is possible you may have 2 images to define the normal, a DirectX image and an OpenGL image. In this case you should use the OpenGL image.

  • Opacity: Opacity determines whether the object is transparent or opaque. The darker the color the more transparent the object will be.

  • Transmission glossiness: indicates how much the light is scattered when it crosses the interface of a transparent material. At zero, the material is perfectly transparent. When this value increases, the material becomes translucent.

  • Ambient occlusion: allows to give shading on some areas of the material (on the stitches of a leather for example).

  • Transmission scattering: the transmission scattering color and the transmission scattering length go together. This setting is similar to the transmission glossiness, except that the effect is volumetric. The transmission scattering color represents the color of the particles inside the transparent material, and the scattering length indicates the distance a ray can travel before being absorbed by a particle. This is useful for simulating transparent liquids (like wine) where the color is due to the particles in the liquid and where the thickness of the material must be taken into account.