External Material Files

An external material definition is also supported. This allows NASTRAN material data cards to be drawn directly from a named file in a directory specified by the resource *.material.directory (see section 1.4).

This type of material data is accessed via the 'EXTERNAL' material type with the name of the file supplied as the material name. Note that the material ID number in the file will be modified by the interface as it is copied to the NASTRAN input file.

For example, the following command should be used to access file L196b-1 in the materials directory:

PROPERTY MATERIAL EXTERNAL L196b-1 1

The interface program will test for both 'L196b-1' and 'L196B-1' on unix systems, the integer 1 at the end of the command must be included but is not used. A valid material file L196b-1 might contain the following data:

MAT1           1 210000.             .29 .786E-5  .15E-4    293.