Appendix B: Recommendations for Where to Save Created mdata Files

Determine the best location for saving new material files.

When Helius PFA is installed, a pre-populated material library is installed in two locations: to a folder named "Materials" in the Autodesk installation directory and to %APPDATA%\Autodesk\Helius PFA 20XX.X\Materials. This second directory is set as the default location to look for material files and is the correct location in which to save created mdata files. If files are saved in a different location, you must change the location that Helius PFA searches for material files. This location can be changed by changing a variable within the Helius PFA environment file. This environment file is located in the Autodesk installation directory. The name of the environment file is:

hpfa.env

For Windows, the contents of the environment file will look like:

&HPFA_ENV
MATERIAL_FILE_DIR = '<%APPDATA%\Autodesk\Helius PFA 20XX.X\Materials\>'
/

The MATERIAL_FILE_DIR variable can be modified to reflect the location you wish for the product to search for material files. If no materials are found in the specified MATERIAL_FILE_DIR, Helius PFA will proceed to look in the following:

• Installation directory\Materials
• Working directory
• Your home directory
• App directory

Located in the materials directory is a file called HPFAMatDB.xml. This file maps all of the material names to material ids since material ids are used to reference materials by ANSYS. Whenever Helius PFA saves a new material, it automatically updates the HPFAMatDB.xml file. As such, it is necessary to have an HPFAMatDB.xml file in the directory in which the material will be saved.