Properties¶

Properties are the data fields that describe an entity. They are the structured information your team captures alongside each part, assembly, or document — things like material, weight, finish, supplier, or any other attribute relevant to your engineering process.

Where do properties come from?¶

Properties are defined by your administrator at the category level. When an entity is assigned to a category, it automatically inherits all the properties defined for that category.

This means:

• A Raw Material entity might have properties like Material Grade, Density, and Supplier
• A Drawing entity might have properties like Sheet Size, Scale, and Drawing Standard
• A Purchased Part entity might have properties like Manufacturer, Part Number, and Lead Time

Property types¶

MatStream supports the following property types:

Which editor you get for a property is chosen by your administrator — see Editor types. Barcode scanning is described in Barcode scanning.

Thumbnail properties¶

If your category has a Thumbnail property, its editor shows a picture preview and image controls:

1. Open an existing item and find the thumbnail property. Save a newly created item before adding its thumbnail.
2. Click Choose image, or focus the thumbnail editor and paste an image from the clipboard.
3. Check the preview. Click the picture to open a larger preview; click Remove to clear it.
4. Click Save and Close to store changes made in the item dialog. Cancel discards those pending thumbnail changes.

From the Property Browser, open the property's edit dialog instead. Its Save button writes the thumbnail immediately; Cancel leaves the saved image unchanged. A multi-selection can set or remove the same thumbnail on several items, subject to their permissions and lifecycle locks.

Supported formats are PNG, JPEG, WebP, BMP, and GIF, with a 25 MB upload limit. MatStream centre-crops the image to a square and stores a 512 × 512 WebP thumbnail. Animated GIFs use the first frame. This is a visual identifier, not storage for the full original image.

Thumbnails follow category-property view/edit permissions. A read-only editor lets you view the picture but not replace or remove it. If the property is hidden by permissions, it is not displayed.

To see images beside item names, add the thumbnail property through the Library or Explorer column chooser. An empty thumbnail stays blank in the grid. Images are not text-searchable, and the thumbnail column does not support sorting or filtering.

Calculated properties¶

A calculated property has no editor. Its value is worked out from the other properties on the same item, using a formula an administrator writes once on the property definition:

[Quantity] * [Unit Price]
[Estimated Value] * [Probability %] / 100

Property names go in square brackets and are matched without regard to case. The formula understands numbers, +, -, *, /, brackets and a leading minus — and nothing else. Anything more involved belongs in an automation.

The value is recalculated and stored whenever the item is saved, so a calculated property sorts, filters, exports and prints exactly like any other number.

Note: If any property the formula refers to is empty, the result is blank rather than zero. An opportunity with no probability entered has an unknown weighted revenue, not one of nought — and a report that showed 0.00 would understate the total while looking complete. Dividing by zero is blank for the same reason.

Administrators are prevented from saving a formula that refers to a property that does not exist, to a property that is not a number, to the calculated property itself, or to another calculated property in a way that would form a loop.

Required properties¶

Some properties may be marked as required by your administrator. MatStream will prevent saving an entity if a required property has not been filled in.

Required properties are clearly indicated in the editing interface so you know what must be completed before you can save.

Searchable properties¶

Administrators can mark properties as searchable, which makes them available as filter criteria in the entity library grid and search panels.

If you cannot find a property as a filter option, it may not be marked as searchable. Contact your workspace administrator to request this.

List-value properties¶

List properties present a fixed set of allowed values defined by your administrator. This ensures consistency across the catalogue — for example, all entities using a "Surface Finish" property will use the same controlled vocabulary rather than free-text variations.

You cannot type a value that is not in the list. If a value you need is missing, contact your administrator to have it added.

Units of measure¶

Numeric properties can be associated with a unit of measure by your administrator. This links the value to a physical dimension — for example, a Weight property linked to the Mass dimension, so the system knows the value represents kilograms or grams.

This is particularly important for engineering properties where the unit context matters for data quality and downstream use.

Property permissions¶

Not all properties are visible to all users. Your administrator can restrict individual properties to specific user groups. If you expect to see a property and it is not visible, your user group may not have access to it.

Properties and versions¶

Property values are stored per version. This means:

• When you edit a property and save, a new version is created with the updated values
• Previous versions retain their original property values
• You can always see the full history of how a property value has changed over time by reviewing the version history

Next steps¶

• Revisions — understand how revision schemes work
• Lifecycle — understand how lifecycle states control when properties can be edited
• Overview — back to the entities overview