Work with Linked Materials

When you create a custom material and specify a source material, or when you link a custom material to a source material after you've created it, the value of each material field in the source material is copied to the corresponding field in the custom material. In addition, the fields of the custom material remain linked to the fields of the source material, so that a subsequent update to a field of the source material triggers an update to the corresponding field of the custom material. For example, whenever you update your Regional Data Library, the updated unit costs for materials in the Library trigger automatic updates to the unit cost fields of any linked custom materials.

Note the following about linked custom materials:

• Linking and Unlinking: You can link a custom material to a source material when you create the custom material or any time after you create it. In addition, you can unlink a custom material (and all its fields) from a source material, or you can unlink an individual field of a custom material from the corresponding field of the source material. See Linking and unlinking materials and Unlinking material fields.

• Generic Materials: The source materials list in the New Material dialog or the Select Source Material dialog contains materials that are in the current process group for the current Digital Factory. It also contains generic materials, which you can use if no material from the current process group is suitable. Generic materials include materials from other process groups, with field values that are as generic as possible. If a material is in multiple process groups, and it has a field whose value varies across process groups, the generic version of that material contains the value that occurs most frequently for that field. See Using generic source materials.

• Adjusting Unit Cost: You can direct aPriori to adjust the value of the Unit Cost field of a linked custom material whenever the value is copied from the source material. You can specify an Adjustment Factor for a linked custom material in the Material Factors table. The value of the Unit Cost field for the custom material will be maintained as the product of the Adjustment Factor and the value of the source material's Unit Cost field. See Using adjustment factors for linked materials.