About material types

What is material type

A material type is a set of packaging-related technological properties that determine the nature of the packaging material — for example, folding carton cardboard, corrugated board and inverted corrugated board (ICB). In Package Designer a material type is the basis on which materials are created: to create a particular material, a material type must be selected for it whose properties will meet the requirements that the packaging must have.

The characteristics of the material type

The material type is a set of the technological characteristics that determine a group of materials. A type's characteristics are:

Structural

• Name
• Thickness. This is the distance between the two outer surfaces of the sheet. The thickness characteristic comes with a default value; each concrete material that's created on a type can have its own thickness.
• Grammage. This is the weight of the material measured in g/m2. The grammage characteristic comes with a default value; each concrete material that's created on a type can have its own grammage.
• Corrections parameter template. This specifies the set of corrections according to which the parameters in all the projects that use the material will be calculated.
• Diecutting side. It indicates the side on which the die falls.
• Grain-awareness. This is an indication if the grain direction should be taken into account when the material is used in a project.

Visual

Properties that define a surface's realistic 3D rendering, describing how a surface's front and rear sides, as well as edges will appear. The appearance of a surface can be represented by a plain color or a textured image. Also some extra properties are used to model glossiness, matt, reflectivity and other material characteristics for each surface.

The types catalog

The types are listed in a tree-structure catalog. To view it, on the Format menu, point to Materials Catalog, and then click Types Catalog.

Base types

A Package Designer installation comes with three base material types — folding carton cardboard, corrugated board and inverted corrugated board (ICB) — that you can use for making materials to use for creating packaging designs. With its structural properties, base types determines the types.

Base types play a critical role in the setting of a material for a project. During the procedure for creating a project, the selection of a type for the material serves as a filter for the group of materials that can be selected for the project.

The default base types cannot be deleted, nor can their names be edited.

Subtypes

You can use the base types to create subtypes that will be used for creating specific materials. Subtypes inherit the properties of the base type they are created on. For example, a folding carton cardboard material might be defined as "Folding Carton Cardboard" (the base type), Folding Box Board "FBB" type (a first-level subtype), and then a surface and reverse pigment-coated folding boxboard "GC1" (a second-level subtype).

Structural and visual properties can be assigned at every level of the hierarchy. Unless customized, they are inherited from the higher-level types. For details about how to set structural and visual properties, see Setting types.

Managing the types catalog

In the catalog you can:

• Create and edit types and subtypes.
• Clone types — creating a type by copying an existing one under a new name, and then editing the original settings.
• Delete types.