Materials

Create and manage shared material definitions for your organisation — all material families available across every tool.

Overview

Materials are reusable property sets that define the physical characteristics of a structural material — density, elastic modulus, yield strength, and design-code-specific parameters such as characteristic compressive strength for concrete or grade designation for steel. When you save a material to your organisation, every engineer in that org can apply it to any tool instance without re-entering the same values.

Each material also carries optional sustainability metrics — global warming potential (GWP A1–A3), embodied energy, and unit cost — displayed in the editor’s material metrics panel and reported alongside section quantities. These figures are attributable: the material records where each value came from, so the source appears beside the figure wherever it is shown.

Browsing the catalogue

The Materials tab lists your organisation’s materials. Four controls narrow the view:

System defaults are read-only. If a system grade is close to what you need but not exact, create a new material and enter your own values — the system row gives you a baseline to compare against.

Creating a material

From the Org Settings → Materials tab:

1. Click New material.

2. Select a region first. The region you choose determines which grade catalogue and design standard tags are relevant — grade designations name different quantities between jurisdictions (AS 3600 uses a characteristic cylinder strength in MPa; ACI uses a psi class; EN uses a cylinder/cube pair). The grade dropdown stays disabled until a region is selected.

3. Select a material family from the dropdown. Available families include:

   • Concrete
   • Reinforcing steel
   • Prestressing strand
   • Structural steel
   • Aluminium
   • Timber

4. Optionally select a subfamily and a grade — except for prestressing strand, where subfamily is required (it drives the AS 3600 Cl 5.3.3 fire axis-distance increase) and the field defaults to Strand rather than offering a blank option. Picking a grade from the region’s catalogue pre-fills the engineering values (elastic modulus, density, yield strength); you can override any pre-filled value.

   For structural steel, the available subfamilies are HotRolled, StructuralSection and Plate. HotRolled covers AS/NZS 3679.1 bars and sections — universal beams and columns, channels, angles — while Plate covers AS/NZS 3678 plate, the stock a welded girder is fabricated from. The values ColdFormed, Reinforcing, and Prestressing were previously accepted as steel subfamilies, but are now retired — each has its own dedicated family in the platform (see Retired steel subfamilies below).

5. Choose at least one design standard tag (required for org-level materials). The region’s applicable standards are pre-selected based on the grade you chose — review and adjust as needed.

6. Enter the material’s name and adjust any engineering values in the form.

7. Optionally expand the Sustainability section to enter carbon and cost data (see Sustainability metrics below).

8. Click Save.

The material is immediately available to every member of the organisation.

:::note[All families now available in the create dialog — August 2026 (#5067)] Prior to this update only steel families appeared in the material family dropdown. The dialog now lists all families — concrete, reinforcing steel, prestressing strand, structural steel, aluminium, and timber — so you can pre-define materials for any tool from one place. :::

:::note[Steel subfamily limited to HotRolled and StructuralSection — September 2026 (#5520)] The ColdFormed, Reinforcing, and Prestressing subfamily values are retired as inputs for structural steel materials. The API refuses them with a descriptive 400 error and directs you to the correct family. See Retired steel subfamilies for the mapping and the replacement workflow. :::

:::note[New Plate steel subfamily, and the AU steel catalogue — September 2026 (#5834)] Structural steel gains a third subfamily, Plate, for AS/NZS 3678 plate. Neither existing value was true of it: HotRolled now carries AS/NZS 3679.1 bars and sections, and plate is the stock a welded girder is fabricated from rather than a section itself.

The AU steel catalogue is also much larger. AS/NZS 3679.1 Grade 300 and 350 (hot-rolled sections) are new, and AS/NZS 3678 Grade 250, 300 and 400 join the existing Grade 350 (plate). Yield strength in both standards is graded by thickness, so each grade is seeded once per thickness band and the band is named on the row — for example AS/NZS 3679.1 Grade 300 (11 up to 17 mm). Pick the band your section’s material thickness falls in; “up to” and “and over” include the stated thickness, “over” and “under” exclude it. :::

:::note[Region-first grade selection — September 2026 (#5481)] The Region field moved to the top of the create form and now gates the grade dropdown. Previously the grade list mixed AS 3600, EN, and ACI designations in a single dropdown with no indication of which jurisdiction each belonged to. Selecting a region first filters the catalogue to grades published under that jurisdiction’s standards. :::

Retired steel subfamilies

Prior to September 2026 (#5520), the structural steel family accepted three additional subfamily values — ColdFormed, Reinforcing, and Prestressing — that predated the introduction of dedicated families for those material types. Those subfamilies are now retired as steel inputs:

If you attempt to create or update a material with a retired subfamily, the API returns a 400 error naming the retired value and the replacement family. For example:

'ColdFormed' is retired as a Steel subfamily — create this material under the Cfs family instead. One of: HotRolled, Plate, StructuralSection

Existing materials stored with a retired subfamily continue to load, list, and display correctly — they are not silently altered. Only new creation and updates that supply the retired value are refused.

Grade catalogue behaviour

• No region selected: the grade dropdown is disabled and a prompt explains why.
• Region with no catalogue grades for the chosen family: a message confirms the catalogue is genuinely empty for that combination — not still loading. Leave Grade as — None — and enter values manually.
• Region selected, grades available: the dropdown lists grades for that family and region. Picking one pre-fills engineering values; those values are editable after selection.
• Changing the region: the selected grade is cleared immediately (not after the new list loads) so a designation from the old jurisdiction never stays on screen.

:::note[AS/NZS 4671 Grade D500E reinforcing bar now available — September 2026 (#5790)] D500E (Grade 500E, Class E ductility) is now seeded from AS/NZS 4671:2001 and available as a reinforcing steel grade in ACS and GCS. Key properties:

Caveat: the seeded values are from the 2001 edition of AS/NZS 4671. The 2019 revision introduces additional parameters; that edition has not been checked and is not yet in the catalogue.

D500E differs from D500N in three ways: a higher upper-characteristic to lower-characteristic ratio band, a higher minimum $R_{ek.U}$ (tensile-to-yield ratio), and a higher minimum $A_{gt}$. Do not substitute D500N for D500E in seismic applications. :::

:::note[ACI 318 concrete f’c values stored as exact psi conversions — September 2026 (#5791)] ACI 318 concrete grade designations are defined in psi. They are now stored and displayed as the exact SI conversion of the psi specification value rather than a rounded whole-MPa figure.

Example conversions:

If your projects reference ACI 318 concrete materials that were created before this update, re-open the material to confirm the stored $f'_c$ value. Sections analysed against the previous rounded value may produce slightly different properties (notably $E_c$ derived from $f'_c$ under ACI 318-19 Cl 19.2.2). This is a §874 correction — the psi-specification value is what the code clause defines, and rounding it departed from that definition. :::

Editing a material

Click any material row in the table to open its edit form. Change any field and click Review & save. The review step shows a preview of designs that reference the material so you can assess the impact of your change. Confirm with a required reason (captured in the audit log).

Updated values propagate to every tool instance that references the material — no tool-level action is needed. A drift banner appears in those designs on the next open.

Subfamily, grade, and design standard tags cannot be changed after creation. These identifiers are structural: changing them would silently alter the physical meaning of every design that references the material. Create a new material instead, and update each design that needs the new grade.

:::note[Concrete elastic modulus is derived, not edited — September 2026 (#5527)] A concrete material with a characteristic strength $f'_c$ has no editable elastic modulus. $E_c$ is computed from $f'_c$ under the concrete design standard registered for the project reading the material (AS 3600 Cl 3.1.2, ACI 318-19 Cl 19.2.2, or EN 1992-1-1 Cl 3.1.3), so the same catalogue row correctly reports different moduli in projects working to different codes. The edit form states the derivation in place of the input box; to change $E_c$, change $f'_c$.

A bespoke mix with no $f'_c$ is the exception — there is nothing to derive from, so its elastic modulus is declared directly and stays editable.

On the create form the same rule applies from the moment you pick a concrete grade: the elastic-modulus box fills from the grade and then greys out, with the same sentence beside it. The value is still stored — the column requires one — but nothing reads it. Create a concrete material without a grade and the box stays live, because a material with no $f'_c$ declares its modulus directly. :::

:::note[Clearing a sustainability value] Once a material has a GWP, embodied energy, or unit cost value, that field cannot be blanked back to “no data” from the edit form — the PATCH contract reads null as “leave unchanged”, so a blank field has no effect. To change a value, enter a new number. If you genuinely need to remove the figure, delete and recreate the material. :::

Deleting a material

Open the material’s edit form and click Delete. A material referenced by at least one design option cannot be deleted; the dialog reports how many references are blocking the delete. Either remove those references first, or edit the material’s values in place.

Sustainability metrics

The Sustainability section in the create/edit form is collapsed by default. It contains three optional figures:

Blank fields mean “no data”, not zero. A blank GWP field stores null and the metrics panel shows an em dash; submitting 0 claims the material has zero embodied carbon. Enter a value only when you have a real figure to report.

The Engineering values group above it shows elastic modulus, Poisson ratio, density, and — for the families that carry one — yield strength. Elastic modulus is the one field that can appear as a sentence rather than an input: see Concrete elastic modulus is derived above.

How metrics appear in the editor

Once a design has geometry and assigned materials, the editor’s material metrics panel (the scale icon, bottom of the properties panel) shows per-material and total quantities per metre of section length:

• Area (mm²) and mass (kg/m) are always shown.
• Cost and GWP are shown as indicative figures when data exists; an em dash when the material has no data for that quantity.
• Hover over (or tab to) a material’s figures to see the source you entered — the dataset or EPD behind the figure — together with any declared carbon or cost basis.

Unavailable totals

When one or more materials is missing cost or carbon data, the Total row shows an em dash and an explanation — for example, “2 of 5 materials have no carbon data”. The total is withheld rather than summed over the subset that has data, because a partial sum reads as the whole figure and would be incorrect (§874).

If a total is unavailable, a warning triangle (⚠) appears in the footer bar at the bottom of the properties panel alongside the partial cost and GWP values.

Comparing two materials

Two carbon figures with the same unit are not automatically comparable. A generic dataset row — the EPiC database, for instance — is a hybrid LCA: process data with input-output gap-fill. A manufacturer EPD is a process LCA over a declared product system. The two methods count different things, they are not reconcilable by any published conversion factor, and the hybrid figure runs materially higher. Subtracting one from the other produces a percentage that looks like a carbon saving and is an artefact of the method.

GET /api/v1/materials/{materialId}/metric-comparison?comparatorMaterialId={id} answers whether two materials can be compared, and if so by how much. Both outcomes are a 200 — “these figures are not comparable, and here is why” is the correct answer to a well-formed question, not an error.

Carbon. A percentage is produced only for an EPD-to-EPD comparison whose two sides agree on method, indicator, lifecycle boundary, Product Category Rules and geographic scope, with neither EPD archived or expired. Any disagreement is named and the percentage is withheld; each side is still rendered, tagged with its own methodology, so you can read both figures and see why they do not subtract.

Cost. Both sides must carry a real price, on a basis that can be normalised to the same unit, with the same procurement scope, GST treatment and region. An unknown price is null and stays null — never zero, and never imputed from a similar product. A per-m³ rate on a material that declares no density cannot be converted to a mass basis, and the comparison says that rather than guessing a density.

In practice: the InfraBuild SENSE 600 reinforcing bar carries a manufacturer EPD, but its GWP figure is not seeded — it is a process-LCA number with no other process-LCA row in the catalogue to be read against, and showing it beside the generic EPiC reinforcement row’s hybrid-LCA figure would invite exactly the apples-to-oranges reading this comparison exists to prevent. Comparing SENSE 600 against any other seeded material is refused with “has no carbon figure” — a deliberate withholding, not a gap. SENSE 600 also carries no seeded price — the product’s indicative rate is not published — so its cost comparison is disabled with that stated, rather than filled with a substitute.

Disclaimer

All sustainability figures are indicative. The source note names the dataset each figure came from; methods differ between datasets, and hybrid-LCA datasets (process + input-output gap-fill) run materially higher than manufacturer EPDs. Consult your supplier’s EPD for procurement decisions. Costs are indicative AUD.

Comparing materials by metric

The metric comparison endpoint and its MCP twin return a structured comparison of two materials along a single sustainability or cost dimension.

GET /api/v1/materials/{materialId}/metric-comparison?compareTo={otherMaterialId}&metric={gwp|embodiedEnergy|unitCost}

The response is a MetricComparison object:

EPiC vs EPD comparability (#6107): Hybrid LCA datasets (such as the EPiC database, which combines process-based and input-output data) report systematically higher GWP figures than manufacturer-declared EPDs. Averaging or ratioing an EPiC GWP against an EPD GWP produces a figure that is neither of those things. The endpoint enforces this distinction: a comparison where one material’s GWP came from EPiC and the other from an EPD returns comparable: false and a warning explaining the dataset mismatch. The ratio is withheld rather than returned silently incorrect. To obtain a comparable result, ensure both materials draw their values from the same dataset type.

MCP tool: MaterialTools.CompareMetric wraps the same endpoint. It accepts the same materialId, compareTo, and metric parameters and returns the same MetricComparison structure. It carries no API cost.

:::note[Material metric comparison — September 2026 (#6107)] GET /api/v1/materials/{materialId}/metric-comparison is a new derived read on the materials resource. The endpoint is unmetered (no [ApiCost]). EPiC-vs-EPD comparability enforcement (comparable: false) applies to GWP, embodied energy, and unit cost where the dataset type differs between the two materials being compared. :::

Related pages

• Getting started with Integraph — account setup and first project
• Organisations — managing members and org settings
• Projects and designs — managing tool instances within a project