SOLIDWORKS Weldments is a powerful tool that lets you develop welded structures, frames and structural members for steel buildings with ease. With a basic 2D or 3D sketch, you can easily define the structure framework and generate structural members. These members can also be added with gussets, end caps and weld beads available within the Weldments tool. With already available library of pre-defined structural shapes according to standards, design engineers can effortlessly generate the design with drawings, cut lists, BOMs and other manufacturing documentation. Although, the Weldments feature is available at part level, it behaves as an assembly.
In this simple example, I’ll explain how to generate a steel structure for a shop building using the SOLIDWORKS Weldments.
1. The very first requirement is to have a 2D or 3D sketch on which structural member feature will be applied. You can select one sketch with multiple segments or also multiple sketches to convert the segments to structural members.
2. The next step is to select the member type you want to apply for a particular set of segments and also select the size based on the type of member you selected.
3. The third step is to group the structural members. Grouping is helpful to define common settings, corner treatments, position and orientation for members that share commonality in the overall structure design. The logical requirement to group members is that they must either meet end-to-end to apply corner treatments or if disconnected, they must be parallel to each other.
4. The groups once created can be selected individually and the setting can be changed for each. The tool lets you define the corner treatment for the segments, gap between the connected segments in the same group as well as gap between the segments in different group. It is also possible to control corner treatments independently by selecting the points of intersection between the segments or structural members.
5. To ensure that the structural members are aligned properly, use the alignment selection box to align the structure profile vertically or horizontally with the sketch or model edge selection.
6. Since the members are considered as independent body, it is possible to pattern or mirror each member to generate multiple copies with greater control.
7. Once the structure is complete, you can easily extract cut list generated automatically from the feature tree. You can easily modify the cut list by right clicking the cut list item. Finally, the cut list table can be selected in the drawing environment.
SOLIDWORKS Weldments can be utilized to efficiently develop steel structures with detailed drawings and cut lists for shop floor requirements. The structural model can also be utilized to perform finite element simulations and measure the stresses and displacements. In a simulation environment, the members behave like simplified beams, which makes easy for the analyst to perform structural studies accurately with less effort. Small shop buildings, industrial rooms or platform structures as such can be created quickly, and eventually helps in accelerating the design process with enhanced productivity and reduced development costs.
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