Learning Forum

[albin.linderstam]

Hello!

I've looked around for these questions but have not been able to find it. I appologize if this is redundant questions.

Two questions:

• Is there an easy way to create a custom material library based on a Excel-file? Like a template that can be filled with material data and converted to a xml-file and imported by Ansys.
• Is there an easy way to share a custom material library with colleagues?

Background:

The idea about using an Excel-file is that it would probably be easy to update it with new materials and generate a new xml-file that can be imported to Ansys.

Lets say that we have a 10 specific materials that we generally use in our components and we decide to add all these materials to a custom library that we now have created (either from an xml-file or from manually adding them). This custom library (file) should now be placed on a disc and available for other colleagues, so they can import it to their model and use those materials.

Kind regards, Albin

[David Mercier]

Dear Albin I think what you need is Granta MI.
You can find several examples in the literature about this software used to manage, to store and to share materials data. Here an example:
Export functions, gateways and more are present in Granta MI to import/to export materials data using different file formats (.xls, .txt,...).
Regards
David

[albin.linderstam]

Hello David Thank you for your answer.
I'm not sure we have Granta MI.
Lets assume we don't, is it possible for me to create a user-defined library where I can export the complete library to an xml-file (not just one material)?
Regards, Albin

[David Mercier]

Hi Albin, can you explain a bit more what you want to do? From where do you want to export?

[albin.linderstam]

I'm a beginner in Ansys so sorry for not finding the proper description.
Is it possible to do the following steps:
* Engineering Data Sources -> Add a new library -> Save as MatML 3.1 Files (*.xml) -- Export
* Add X specific materials that we generally use
* Store this xml-file somewhere so it can be reached by colleagues
* A colleague can select "Add an existing data source from file" -- Import
Later on, we notice that we want to add more materials to this library, so we simply add these materials and save a new material library (*.xml), an updated revision we can say, that again can be reached by colleagues.
Do you find any problems with the above mentioned steps?

[David Mercier]

Yes this strategy works well.
If you have bigger materials database to manage, Granta MI is more suitable and relevant for such questions.
Then you could be interested in Ansys ACT extension like the "GenericMaterialTransfer" to customize Workbench for input and output specification and file management capabilities.