Appearance Properties and Translations

The appearance of a raw material or mixture can be given on Safety Data Sheets and often on specifications too. Usually in Formpak, people add the property ‘Appearance’ and add text e.g. ‘Clear yellow liquid’. This works well for the majority, but to avoid spelling errors and inconsistencies, we have created a set of properties that users can select. This way it helps to avoid similar descriptions such ‘clear’ and ‘see-through’, ‘light yellow’ and ‘pale yellow’ which can make searching difficult.

There are 3 separate choice properties available in the ‘Physical Data’ property group, which can reflect the overall appearance of an item when joined together:

• APPEARCLARITY – e.g. Clear / Cloudy / Opaque
• APPEARCOLOUR – e.g. Colourless / Yellow / Brown
• APPEARSTATE – e.g. Liquid / Solid / Flakes

Choosing one option for each will show on the Safety Data Sheet together, eg “Clear Yellow Liquid” or “Opaque Brown Solid”:

Translatable Appearance Properties

As these are choice properties selected from the system, as opposed to free test, you can enter translations for each choice, and then the appearance will be shown translated when needed.

Search for “Enter Translations” and select the Entity as ‘Property Choice’ and the Language to Edit as your chosen one, eg French. In the Code box you can type appearclarity, appearcolour or appearstate, or just appear and all will show. Click search.

Then you can add in your translations as seen below and Save. If you require more choices you can add these using ‘Modify a Property’.

Please Note: The CLP Safety Data Sheet, in section 9 for Appearance already includes the logic to show the values of these properties next to each other in a string with spaces in between each choice value. E.g. “Clear Yellow Liquid”. However, if any properties of APPEARCLARITY, APPEARCOLOUR or APPEARSTATE do not have a value, then the value of APPEARANCE property will show instead.p