Ingredient Attributes in Uncountable are information or characteristics of an ingredient or raw material. These can include not only physical properties (ex: specific gravity, boiling point) or chemical properties (ex: molecular weight, polymer content) but also information such as article number, supplier, CAS number, GHS hazard symbols and even files like an SDS or TDS file.
You can visualize all existing attributes in the current Material Family in the Inputs library, under the tab Attributes:
Attributes can be organized into categories such as Chemical or Physical Attributes for better organization of the ingredient’s page:
To add an attribute to an ingredient, in the ingredient’s page select an existing attribute from the dropdown “New Attributes”, or click on “New Attribute” to create a new one:
Only users with Write permission for Inputs are able to create and modify attributes.
When creating a new attribute, enter a name (A), select a category (B), if desired, and select the attribute type (C) from the dropdown (text, numeric, image, etc.).
It is possible to make an attribute automatically become available to new Material Families by checking the option “Automatically add to new material families” (D).
It is also possible to share attributes across other existing Material Families. To do so, select the Material Families that should share the attribute in the dropdown menu “Additional Material Families” (E).
Creating an attribute with a name that already exists in another Material Family is not possible: you will get a warning saying that the name already exists. Go to the Material Family where the attribute exists and add the desired Material Family on “Additional Material Families” there.
Additional Options
If the option “Show attribute when set for inputs of the same category” is enabled (F), the attribute will automatically be shown when creating a new ingredient of the same category as another ingredient that already uses the attribute.
If the option “Require attribute to be entered for all new inputs in all material families” is enabled (G), the attribute field will be shown with warnings when creating a new ingredient:
- If “Required” is selected (I), the attribute field will appear red, and it will be impossible to create the new ingredient without adding a value to the required attribute.
- if “Warning” is selected (J), the field will be marked in yellow as a warning to add a value for the attribute, but the ingredient creation will not be blocked if a value is not entered.
“Show attribute by default” (H) will always show the attribute when creating a new ingredient.
“Create Aggregation” (K) allows you to select an entity such as an Output or a Metadata which is present on lots, so that if the attribute is used in a calculation, the calculation will aggregate over the lot values as well. This option becomes available when editing an attribute which name coincides with lot-related information.
An example is the attribute Purity which can be a theoretical purity, and the output Purity, which is measured for each lot. If the attribute Purity is set to aggregate over the output Purity using the mean (L), for instance, the mean of lot purities will be considered in a calculation where the Purity attribute is used.
