Material summaries

 
In the preparatory production stage, it is important to know the quantity of materials needed to be able to produce a designed assembly. This information is automatically gathered when the Woodwork for Inventor add-on analyses the components constituting the assembly and their structure. As mentioned previously, thanks to the Woodwork for Inventor feature, each component of an assembly has specific materials assigned to it and automatically estimated quantities of those materials. Woodwork for Inventor allows the user to group these materials, to sum them up and provide their final quantities required for the production of the specified product. Such a specification containing quantities of materials required to manufacture a product, will further be referred to as a Material Summary.

The Woodwork for Inventor BOM generator, during the reading of assembly information, automatically generates a material table in the internal structure which contains all materials used in the assembly. In the material summary, the user manipulates Material Items or, to put it more simply, Materials. A material is defined by a range of attributes which can be categorized as follows.

 

Material color description:

 

 

Material description:

 

 

Geometry description:

 

 

Some materials are not linked to colors (see Colors and palette items section) thus the data attributes defining the color of such a material are empty.

 

Geometry description is material parameters that fully define a material and allow the user to identify it during purchase.

For example, when purchasing a laminated board, it is stated that a board with the following parameters is required:

 

•Color - R3222L Birch.

•Material - LMDP Laminated Chipboard.

•Thickness - 18mm.

 

We can see that in the case of the board, its thickness is provided to describe a material. The nature of parameters defining a material geometry depends on the material type. For example, to define an edge band geometry, you need to define an edge band width and thickness. Click here for a detailed description as to what parameters are characteristic of specific materials.

 

Material.Quantity - a quantity of material which states the total amount of material in the assembly. It is expressed in the units that are used to estimate a material. Click here for a detailed description as to what units specific materials are expressed in.

 

Thus a material item has a range of material defining attributes. In the material summary, the user manipulates items presented in a material table, or simply materials. When listing material attributes in the summary template, we define what table position a given datum should appear during a summary generation.

 

To specify that a row of the column requires a material name defining a table structure, the following has to be entered in a relevant column: Material.Name

 

To obtain a material color code, enter: Material.Color.Code

 

etc.

 

Click here for a detailed list of attributes defining a material.