Each CAD system typically provides a mechanism for specifying material, and the name of the chosen material is typically stored or exposed as a standard property or parameter. For example, Pro/ENGINEER stores this information in "PTC_MATERIAL_NAME". aPriori can read these material specifications and attempts to map them to aPriori materials. Prior to Release 2018 R1 SP1, the CAD material property value had to match an aPriori material exactly. As of 2018 R1 SP1, the XML mapping file can now use CSL to map the CAD property to an aPriori material (i.e., the CAD material property no longer needs to exactly match an aPriori material name, but the output of the CSL mapping expression does). If an exact match cannot be made, the VPE default material is used.

Note that a similar capability has been available for some time in Direct Integration mode for Pro/ENGINEER. CAD property extraction now makes this available for all supported CAD systems in CAD Independent mode and plug-ins.

aPriori material mapping also provides the ability to use a “generic” CAD property to influence material selection in aPriori. Some sites use a different property other than the standard one to store the material name (for example, a Pro/ENGINEER site might use “MATERIAL_DETAILS” instead of “PTC_MATERIAL_NAME”).