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Materials selection process is very complex task which has to take into consideration various elements.
To be sure that the product can have long life span and still be cost effective engineers need to select materials of future product in the most optimal way, considering their properties as well as final product cost. In order to help engineers to easily find required materials we have developed semantically aided toolkit called CroLOD. CroLOD database contains material records associated with some of main properties like its density, strength, cost, resistance to corrosion and so forth. Ontology containing materials and their relation was first designed in Protégé tool and then loaded into Virtuoso database store. To make application usage easier for engineers CroLOD offers modern Web 2.0 web interface which consists of two main parts. On the left side is panel with all search filters (like Material properties, groups or individual materials). On right side of main screen there is simple search form which offers user to enter queries. Due to implementation of ajax queries, autocomplete function offers search results as user fills search form. After search is done, results are shown in a table with many additional information along with charts which displays various material properties and their component stakes. SPARQL syntax knowledge is not necessary for usage so even users without technical knowledge are able to use it immediately. Additional video guides are available in help section of the program.
