I work in a sheet metal fabrication shop, and we cut sheet metal parts out of sheets from a metal supplier.  (This is common I think?).  It seems obvious (to me), that the SW-Material, the gauge table selection, should be somehow linked.  It would also be great if blank size (in square feet, not square inches), was readily available.

I am trying to finish setting up our company templates, and would the following information on both the part drawing, and in the assembly BOM.

1. Gauge -  If the part is less than 3/16" thick, show the gauge of the material (eg 10ga, 12ga, 14ga, etc.).  If it is thicker than 3/16", this is generally referred to as "plate", and comes in nominal sizes of 3/16", 1/4", 1/2", etc.
2. Material - We use various materials, such as 304SS, galvanized , 44W Mild Steel, UHMW, etc.
3. Blank size - How many square feet does each part use?  If this was on the BOM, we could add up all the same types of material, so we know roughly how much material to order (via our ERP software)

How does everyone else do this?  The only workaround I see is to enter custom properties (via the property tab builder), but then the information is entered twice.

EDIT - Thanks for all the suggestions / comments.  I will share with everyone where I ended up:

• I gave up on the gauge table linking with anything.  Our team knows that if we are bending it, it needs a gauge table, that isn't linked.
• I did set up my gauge table to have multiple materials in one file.  But you can't have them the same thickness, so I have mild steel 0.0001" less in thickness than stainless steel.  (Eg. 304SS is .1875" thick, and 44W is .1874" thick.  This allows different bend radii, depending on the material, all in the same part (using different configurations to control thickness).
• I have a custom property for everything I want on a drawing - no direct linking.  I started all my custom properties names with "CP-" so they can be easily distinguished.  Most custom properties are entered using the property tab builder.
• I used the property tab builder to have a pull down for each gauge / plate, with a field that also showed you what the thickness was (so you knew you picked the right one).
• I have a seperate field "ERP Part Number", that has a pull down for the number I want in our ERP software (eg 1/4" 304SS versus PLA-304SS-250).
• I linked SW-Material to my custom property CP-Material.  But, I can break the link, if I want something custom.  I have custom SW-Materials, for UHWM, 44W, 304SS, etc.
• I have an equation set up to estimate flat area, based on SW-SurfaceArea" / 2 * 1.25 scrap.