Materials List

I have been applying materials to parts. During the process, I have been
adding some custom materials by using the "Create/Edit Materials" button. I
accidentally created a duplicate material with a slight spelling difference.
I really don't want to have 2 of the same material in the list. This is the
second time I have done this and the list of my custom materials is starting
to get garbled quick.

Is there a way to remove the extra material from the list? I tried the
Remove Material button but that only removed the applied material for the
part, but doesn't remove it from the list.

P.S. Has anyone started sharing custom databases of materials yet? If so,
does anyone know where I can download any? I would be willing to share
mine, but it is very, very small at the moment since I am just starting this
process, so it probably would not do very much good to anyone.

Thanks,
Seth

 

Seth,

As far as I know, you can't remove the mistake.

I'll try to open and edit the file later tonight and will let you know how
it goes.

Tom

 

A question I have is how to transfer this info or custom hole wizard info to
another computer or even back it up and restore it if you need to set up a
new computer. I don't believe the copy option wizard will do it.

Dave H

 

Mike,

You are correct, notepad opens the file.

I don't know about your notepad, but mine showed numerous sq. characters
that I didn't know if they made a data base difference. Also there are
numerous indents and sq. characters which seem to be the material
("number")???

All in all it is not a nice file to edit.

Tom

 

Mike,

I was able to open the custom database in Notepad. Now, is it a simple
mater of deleting everything from the "material name" line that I don't want
up to the next "material name" line? Or is there something else that must
change in the file also?

Thanks,
Seth

 

Mike,

I forgot to tell you why the question about what to change in the material
data file.

I notice lots of square characters at the end of almost every line in the
file. But, what is interesting is that every sequential material has one
extra square character at the end of the line.

For example the 1st and 2nd materials, for some reason, do not have any
square characters (can't explain this one). However, my 3rd material has 1
square character after every line. My 4th material has 2 square character
after every line. My 5th material has 3 square character after every line.
My 6th material has 4 square character after every line. And so on...

I don't know what the character represent so I don't really want to screw it
up.

I am hoping that they are used to somehow let SW know which material a
certain part is supposed to be. For example, lets say I originally created a
material of "S7" and applied it to a part. Later I decided that I wanted to
change the material name to "AISI S7" within this data file, and it had say
8 square characters behind it. When I reopen that part file that had "S7"
applied to it, I am hoping that SW somehow knows that the material is
supposed to be the one with 8 square characters regardless of the material
name. That would make renaming the materials a little easier so that don't
have to re-apply materials in every part that was originally "S7". But it
may be that the material becomes embedded within the SW part file and
doesn't it matter. Can anyone confirm this before I waste my time trying it?

If that isn't what the square characters do, that I am afraid that just
deleting lines may cause problems. But I don't know. Any thoughts or
experiences?

Seth

 

I believe you to be correct. If you look at the SolidWorks default file at
\SolidWorks\lang\english\sldmaterials\solidworks\materials.sldmat, there
are none of the ascii caracters that show up in the user created file.

Dave H

 

Those squares usually mean a character of some sort in the file that doesn't
map into the current character set.

But I'm curious because I'm not seeing them in my files. Exactly where is
it that these odd characters show up?

BTW, technically these are XML files, not HTML, although the tag-style
formatting should look kind of familiar.

--Brenda

 

but mine showed numerous sq. characters
I believe it's just be a matter of the current font, and less-than-100
percent compatible editors. Most WIN/DOS editors store "new line"
characters as two invisible characters, a "carriage return" char, and
a "line feed" char, (presumably to keep backward compatability with
the dozen or so Royal typewriters that are still being used). Some
editors/OS'es use just a single CR char or a single LF char.

When a WIN editor expects to see both these chars, and only sees one,
it forgets to make the Char invisible, and start a new line, and
instead displays the Char and does NOT start a new line.

Open the thing in DOS edit and see how it looks then. SavesAS to
another file name, and then load it back up in your fav editor.

 

Thanks Mike. Too bad I don't know web page editing
OK I edited the file to delete the material that I accidentally duplicated.
But something is amiss now. Every time I try to add a new material, I get a
fatal error. To quote the error:

Fatal Error: c00cee61: line: 1, column 2
File: X:\Materials Databases\Custom Materials.sldmat
Illegal qualified name character.

SW is still working fine though. And if I try to add a material from the
default database there are no problems. When I try to add a material and
access the custom materials again, I get the same error again. When I edit
the materials file, I see that the everything above the <classification
name> line is not there (compared it to a backup copy of course). If I copy
and paste the missing data (header data I presume) from the backup file into
the crapped out file, it will work fine again until I add another material
to it. Then I have the same error and the same missing data.

Does anyone have a clue what's going on here?

Seth