- [Instructor] The material you choose for your part
is going to have everything to do
with how it's going to perform in its function.
Now, I have a couple different options of the way
I can apply material to a part inside of Solidworks,
and if you look over here on the left hand side,
you can see here under Cast Alloy Steel,
I've already selected that as my material,
and if I want to change that material,
I can easily right click,
and click on edit material,
or choose from one of my favorites down here.
If I click on edit material,
notice I get a full list
of all the different types of steels,
irons, aluminum,
copper, titanium,
and so on that I can choose from.
I can even create my own custom materials down here,
or select from any of the available options.
Now, if I go ahead and choose something like
an aluminum alloy,
a really common alloy is 6061,
so let's go down here and choose 6061 Alloy,
and notice that is a generalized alloy.
It's not specific on the temper.
Now, the temper of an alloy has a lot to do
with how strong it is,
or how it's going to react to different forces,
so a temper like an O,
which is annealed,
is going to be less strong
than a temper like a T6.
Notice these values here at tensile strength
is changing from 31
down to 124.
So, quite a bit different between the annealed condition,
and the T6 condition of that material,
so make sure you're choosing the right material,
and the right temper for what you're working with,
and sometimes those tempers are not listed.
For instance, if you use extruded bar,
a lot of times that's 6061-T6511,
which is a little bit of an intermediate temper,
and that's going to have a little bit different
mechanical properties than the regular T6 material.
Also, keep in mind how you're going to be producing this part.
Is it going to be a casting?
Is it going to be a machining?
Are you going to be extruding it?
How are you going to be making this part
because each one of those processes is going to impart
some type of characteristic to that material
and the strength of it regardless
of what the alloy is, or the temper.
Alright, so make sure you're choosing the right one,
and go ahead and click on apply.
Click on close, and now my part has changed color.
Now it looks like a piece of aluminum,
and I've chosen the 6061-T6O by accident.
I actually wanted to choose the T6 configuration.
No problem.
Go back, edit material,
slide down here,
and let's choose T6,
apply, close, and now we're ready to go.
Now, over here on the right hand side,
you can see we have these appearances.
Click on appearance, and I can apply different things.
So for instance, over here,
I might say, "Hey, I'd like to apply maple,
"or oak, or wood."
You probably wouldn't make this out of wood,
but just in case you wanted to, we have that option.
Hold down alt, click and drag,
place it on to there,
click OK,
and now I've got a wooden bracket.
Not so, okay?
Over here on the left,
notice it's still 6061-T6.
This has just added an appearance
of wood to that bracket,
and that's not the case,
so make sure you're aware
that the material you're using for your analysis
is coming from this Solidworks material,
not the appearance over here on the right hand side.
So let's go ahead and just get rid of that.
Let's undo, get rid of that appearance.
We don't need it.
It makes a lot more sense
if it looks like a piece of aluminum,
and now, we're ready to apply that material.
Come up here to evaluate,
over here to SimulationXpress.
All right, we've already added these fixtures.
Our external load seems to have disappeared from this one,
so let's go back and add that in
as we go through this whole thing,
so click on next,
apply a force.
We've already gone through this one time,
but let's go ahead and choose
this inside surface here.
As far as the selected direction,
let's go ahead and choose the top surface.
I'm going to go ahead and use english,
reverse the direction so it's going down
inside of that hole,
and change this to being 1000.
We've already done this,
but well, let's just go ahead and review.
Now we've got a force,
we've got a fixture over here,
and now we're going to go ahead and click on next,
and choose the material.
Now because I've already preselected the material
inside of regular Solidworks,
it shows up right here.
Here's the Young's modulus.
Here's the yield strength,
and that's everything we need,
but at this point in time,
if you hadn't already selected a material,
you could easily click over here,
change the material,
select whatever you want,
apply it, click on close,
and now you have that new material being selected,
but I would definitely recommend,
instead of applying it inside of only SimulationXpress,
definitely go back, and apply it to your model itself.
That way, that information will be with that model,
and you'll have the correct weight,
measure and everything else applied to that model
no matter what you're doing with it,
so definitely take a look at that.
When you're working with the materials,
make sure you review
everything that goes into that material,
as far as the temper and the process,
so you're really getting accurate results
because if you choose the wrong material,
obviously, your results are going to be drastically different.