A simple but power-full tool is CATIA V5 is the Mass section, from where you can find very fast the main dimensions and weights of a part or of an assembly.
To be more precise is very important to have assigned to each PartBody an material, You need to have on your interface active the Apple material icon from where you can assign material for each part. To activate this you should check View -> Toolbars –> Apply Material.
When you click on the Apply Material icon you will see a lot a material categories from where you can choose almost all usual material used in engineering. The most used part for me is the Metal section where you can choose a lot of materials.
Why it is important to choose the correct material for your part?
It is very important because each material as you know has a density. With this density the weight of a part can be measured in CATIA. For example the density of steel is 7860kg/m3.
How to display the weight, mass, center of gravity and surface in CATIA V5
After you choose the material for you part, you can very easy track your dimensions. And to do that you have several methods to display that.
1. From your tree, select the top element (name of the part), right click and choose Proprieties. Navigate to the Mass tag and here you will find what you need:
- the density of your material (kg/m3);
- the volume in m3;
- mass in kg;
- surface in m2;
- center of gravity (pay attention to the position of the coordinate system);
- inertia Matrix.
2. Using Measure item (available in the toolbar View –> Toolbars –> Measure). I use this tool when I want to save the dimensions on the part. Here you can have a lot of custom information directly on your part. Note: it is important to select a part before you press on the Measure item icon (but you can select also after you press this button).
The most fun part of this tool is the Customize… button where you can activate or deactivate a lot of options when you measure. I recommend to take a look in this area because it will help you a lot.
Display Density, weight, mass and surface from Measure Item
If you want to save a measure after you close the Measure item window, you should check the Keep measure button.
How to change in CATIA V5 the unit of measurement?
Sometimes I need to have other unit measure for volume, or for surface measurements and I was forced to change the measure unit in CATIA. To do that it is very easy. You should navigate to Tools –> Options and in the General select Parameters and Measure and after that select the Units tab. Here you have all measure units available in all your CATIA modules. In this view you can also change the precision of measurements by changing the number of decimals.
To see more in detail, you can watch the video tutorial where you can find more easy how to measure volume, surfaces or weights.
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