Every sheet metal part designed with Creo Elements/Direct Sheet Metal has a material attribute which defines the chosen material type, the material thickness, and other material specifications. All material-related calculations are based on this information.
Sheet metal parts that were not designed with Creo Elements/Direct Sheet Metal, but imported from other systems, miss this information. Creo Elements/Direct Sheet Metal allows you to attach material attributes to those imported sheet metal parts.
The imported sheet metal part must fulfill certain conditions. For example, all elements of the sheet metal part must have the same thickness.
The thickness of any part you want to handle in Creo Elements/Direct Sheet Metal should be equal to the thickness (gage) of a material defined in the Creo Elements/Direct Sheet Metal Technology Database.
Within limits you can also change an existing material attribute. If you want to assign another material attribute to a sheet metal part, the new material must have the same thickness as the previous material.
To attach a material attribute to a sheet metal part,
1. Click Sheet Metal and then, in the Attach group, click Material. The Attach dialog box opens.
2. Specify a part to attach a material attribute. The material table of the current shop appears.
3. Select a material from the Sheet Metals table. Click Apply.
4. If the part already contains a material attribute, the Detach check box is active. Click the Detach check box to detach the existing material without attaching a new material.
5. Click to complete the operation.
If the specified part has a material already attached to it, the material ID and the thickness appear in the relevant boxes. You can either leave the dialog box with Cancel, or proceed and specify another material of the same thickness, or detach the existing material.
Material. The Attach dialog box opens.
to complete the operation.