Assigning Material Properties

You must assign a material to a part before you can analyze it. You can assign materials in the CATIA Part Design or Assembly Design workbench. If you enter the Nonlinear Structural Analysis or Thermal Analysis workbench from a .CATPart or .CATProduct document containing a part without a material assignment, a dialog box appears warning you that the material definition is missing. You must return to the Part Design or Assembly Design workbench to apply a material.

Assigning Material Properties: Assigns material properties to parts in a .CATPart or .CATProduct document in the Part Design or Assembly Design workbench.

This task shows you how to assign a material to a part and apply material rendering to the current view.

  1. Open a part in the Part Design workbench or a product in the Assembly Design workbench.

  2. To assign a material to a part, do the following:

    1. Select the PartBody feature in the specification tree.

    2. Click the Apply Material icon .

      The Library dialog box opens. The default .CATMaterial document is used.

    3. Select a material family from the tabs along the top of the dialog box, then choose a material from the displayed images, and click OK.

      The material is applied to the part, and a material object appears under the PartBody objects set in the specification tree.

  3. To apply a render style to a part that reflects the material assignment, select View>Render Style>Customize View from the menu bar, and toggle on Materials in the Custom View Modes dialog box that appears.