For our products we have specific components, but also standard components whose material can change. That is to say that the geometry of the part does not change, but only my material changes.
The easiest way would be to create as many standard components as materials, but I'm wondering about the update, the evolution of the part. This would require updating each component individually at the risk of having different geometries.
Then it's to create a standard component, to integrate it into another component where the material will be managed.
There is surely another easier way so I'm listening.
Otherwise you can create a new part and insert the reference part directly, and you choose the material afterwards. But each time the geometry of the base changes, you have to open all the other parts to update them, it seems to me.
Otherwise go through the configurations and give the name of the configuration the part number, for the drawings you will have to call the name of the configuration to get the number of the part with the bubbles in automatic.
With us, also with PDM, We work with a root in article code And we manage the material (in our case the color) with the configuration. We don't need material properties in particular yet... But I think it's recoverable
We have one part, roof sheet, with a "123456" reference It's the same sheet metal that goes on our products, only the color changes.
Item codes of the type
"123456-7016" -> RAL grey "123456-9010" -> RAL white "123456-6005" -> RAL green ...
We manage and maintain only one 3D file and plan. A small table is present on the map to indicate the correspondences of the colours.