Pasting material propeties

[Anonymous]

It would be helpful if material properties could be entered in Simulation Mechanical 2017 by pasting.  Often, it is necessary to enter from specific measurements properties that differ from the tabulated values.  Presently, the only way I have found to do so is to edit the properties and manually alter the values shown.  It is possible to copy and paste the modified values?

[John_Holtz]

Hi dwuchinich,

Can you provide a more specific example? I did not understand your statement "it is necessary to enter from specific measurements properties that differ from the tabulated values". Maybe you can record a screencast (http://www.autodesk.com/products/screencast/overview) of what you are doing and post it to a reply.

Some questions that come to mind are: 

1. From where are you copying the information?
2. What material model?
3. What properties are in the
4. Are you pasting the properties into the material library (Tools > Options > Manage Material Library) or into the material properties for the part (right-click on part's material > Edit Material > Edit Properties)? I see that when editing the material properties for the part, the right-click menu does not include copy/cut/paste, but you can you the standard keyboard shortcuts of Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, and Ctrl+V to paste text into the text boxes.

[Anonymous]

I am copying from a spreadsheet or from a text file. I did notice that
I can copy and paste properties using the keyboard commands, but it
seems a little quaint that such a capable analysis program does not use
the mouse for such operations as it is a convenience, especially when
several properties in every material in a structure composed of as many
as 20 different materials needs modification.
--

[AstroJohnPE · Accepted solution]

Hi dwuchinich,

I tried to find a way to use a copy and paste method, but there does not seem to be a way to do it. You might want to submit the idea (along with a description of what you want to do or how you want it to work) to the Ideas station.

Another possibility would be to edit the model database directly and change the material properties outside of the Sim Mech interface. Is this faster or easier than using the interface?

1. Optionally, delete the following files from the ds_data\#\ds.mod folder: elemcond.*, elements.*, nodecond.*, and nodes.*. It is not necessary to delete these, but the translation will go faster if you do (especially if any of these 4 databases are large).
2. Translate the databases to text files: "Tools > Options > Database Translation Utility".
3. Open the file model.csv, either with a text editor (like Notepad) or Excel. The advantage of using Excel is that you can sort the data to make it easier to find things, and so on.
4. Update the material properties of interest. (Copy and Paste from your other Excel file.)
5. Save model.csv and exit Excel.
6. Translate it back to the database format: "Tools > Options > Database Translation Utility". You should see the changes to the material if you edit any part.