Easy way to figure out what material to use in a project?

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I'm only a uni student at the moment and this feels more like something you learn from experience than something taught in a lecture but I'll thought I should ask anyway.

Is there an easy way to select materials for engineering projects? I was hoping to find there is a nice dictionary sized compilation of both standard and patented materials, listing their engineering and physical properties ad who makes the stuff, maybe with an easy to use contents page that helps you track down what you need.

So far I've had to trawl through pdf after pdf blindly looking for the material I need. It's not too bad if it's a common steel like 4130, but I just spent several hours trying to track down something that would fit project I'm working on (completely unrelated to uni) before tentatively settling on Aermet 100. There must be an easier way to do this.

Any tips? I'm not adverse to buying a hardcopy reference manual if it save me time. I figured you guys in the Material's Engineering section would be better to ask than the mechanical.

Cheers

 

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Materials selection MIT[/PLAIN]

Ashby Chart

 

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Materials selection MIT
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Ashby Chart

I think you've misunderstood what I'm asking. I know how to select what material properties are needed for a given task, what I'm having trouble with is converting that into actual materials. I'm looking for any easy way to find the material I need from the given properties. Either a book or a computer program that can search a database for materials based on properties I can enter.

 

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Engineers Handbook

MatWeb

Granta - this is a professional level tool but it is not freeware