Clicking on the Stacking Tab (or selecting a laminate in the menu tree) opens the Stacking section were laminates are created and edited. Like the materials section the user can view a single laminate in standard view or observe and edit laminates in the global table view.

The standard view table includes a table showing the current laminate and offers a number of right click options as follows:

Populate Laminate: Use this function to quickly populate a laminate by populating a laminate with the selected Number of plies. The best approach is to first select a material (by right clicking the table) and assigning it to the first ply. Then use the populate laminate function to add N plies to the laminate.

Assign Material: Use this function to assign a material to a ply. The materials are filtered by type in the selection for ease of selection.

Add Ply (Plies): The selected ply (or plies by selecting and holding the shift key) on the table can be added to the laminate to quickly add plies.

Delete Ply (Plies): The selected ply (or plies by selecting and holding the shift key) on the table are deleted. If all plies are deleted then the laminate resets to 1 ply and asks for a material to be selected.

Symmetry: Right clicking this option makes the laminate symmetric. If one ply is selected then the entire laminate is made symmetric. If two or more plies are selected (using the shift key) then those plies are made symmetric

Common Ply Orientations: Depending on the number of plies in the laminate the user can select a series of common laminate orientations to populate the laminate. The common angle input at the top of the table is used to assign less common +/- orientations to this function. Note the laminate is populated with integer cells of these common ply orientations and the laminate may not be symmetric after picking this function. (Click the Symmetry button to restore symmetry after this operation)  

Fill Column: Fills the selected column with data from the row selected. This works for all columns including material selection.

Invert Selection: If one ply is selected then the laminate is inverted, if more than one ply is selected then the selection is inverted.

Other functions and features

• If your lower the number of plies in an existing laminate the laminate is trimmed to the correct length.
• You can edit any value in the table directly by entering data. You can also interactively change a value (or selected values) using the slider bar on the bottom right of the laminate input window
• Note that all changes to the laminate are stored immediately in the laminates databases. Use the duplicate Laminate Feature to make many laminates to compare results.
• You can right click any laminate to save the data to the clipboard or load directly into Microsoft Excel©