I had a chance to mess around and start to create a material database
that is pertinent to my company, rather than the out of the box one
from SolidWorks.  Am I missing anything, or can you only input
material property values in metric in the new material database?  It
seems very poor if this is the case.  Also, I posted another thread
about this, but why is there a limitation of character space for the
material name?  Try adding a longer material name - you can't put
anything in there past the space provided.  This is very limited if
you have a long material callout like this "STEEL ROUND BAR, 4140 Q &
T PER ASTM A434-90a CLASS BD".  I have had it suggested that we just
abbreviate, but then we have people here guessing at what the
abbreviation is, since this name will eventually show up on the
drawing via custom file properties.  The material database has some
promise, but needs some work.  What you guys think of it?

I think its a start, but long overdue. I hated simply having to go through
all the descriptions and change them all to capital letters so they would
show up correctly on my drawing. It does have it's limitations that we'll
have to live for a while. I started using it, but I ended up going back to
my old manual method.

Regarding the metric only issue: I believe that SolidWorks computes in
metric units and then converts the results to whatever you have your
document units set at.

"Pete Yodis" <pdy@haroldbeck.com> wrote in message
news:a84087.0311140529.51875d44@posting.google.com...
> I had a chance to mess around and start to create a material database
> that is pertinent to my company, rather than the out of the box one
> from SolidWorks.  Am I missing anything, or can you only input
> material property values in metric in the new material database?  It
> seems very poor if this is the case.  Also, I posted another thread
> about this, but why is there a limitation of character space for the
> material name?  Try adding a longer material name - you can't put
> anything in there past the space provided.  This is very limited if
> you have a long material callout like this "STEEL ROUND BAR, 4140 Q &
> T PER ASTM A434-90a CLASS BD".  I have had it suggested that we just
> abbreviate, but then we have people here guessing at what the
> abbreviation is, since this name will eventually show up on the
> drawing via custom file properties.  The material database has some
> promise, but needs some work.  What you guys think of it?