There must be a faster way for welds in IDW's

[albert]

Here is an example of drawing I did with sketching in the weld caterpillar 

(this works well but is very slow)

I have used the caterpillar weld feature in the idw (it also takes a very long time and does not let me have the freedom to get it just right like sketching does)

As we outsource more and more we can't just leave it up to the "shop guys" anymore to do best weld practises and with most of our outsource vendors being ISO they will not build a weldment that does not have full weld documentation. 

Is there hope on the horizon for a more flexible and faster weld facsimile interface?

[jyager]

I work in the nuclear industry and our welds are meticulously inspected and tracked. I could not imagine ever trying to draw all those catepillar welds on my weldments...the welds don't look like that anyway so whats the purpose in doing them at all? Maybe I'm missing something? I tag all my welds in the .dwg environment...I can go through about 60 welds on a 5 sheet C size set in a couple hours and every one of our welds denotes thickness, length of weld and the tails are filled with procedures and other info.

Seems like it's a waste of energy getting the inadequate weld tools to work imo...easier just to tag them out in the .dwg.

Are you not required to convey any weld thicknesses on the drawings? If our QA/QC saw fillets or slot/plugs like that with no other info they'd melt down.

Do you guys carry that info on some note sheet?

[albert]

Nothing nuclear here 

Throughput is king here and we have tried to be very specific with our weld callouts in the past and at best our shop guys wanted to kill us! (very old school crew)

I am looking for something to give both our shop guys something they can understand (picture) and our vendors something they require without having to do two separate drawings (one for our shop and one for vendors)

We already have to dual dimension every drawing since decimals throw our shop guys for a loop and our vendors need decimals for imputing into their CNC machines.

[wimann]

I don't know if it would actually help but I mean... is there a reason that you wouldn't want to make a weldment out of your model? Then the welds can be physically modeled and displayed in your drawing so the shop guys can see it? And to be honest, I can maybe see why they'd want to see the weld in place but I'd think you'd still want to size the weld which, as nuclear guy mentioned, your weldcallouts have no sizing. But I digress, unless they just improve the process your using now in later versions, your best bet is probably making weldment assemblies and putting the weld there that way.

Where I work, all the info is in the callout and not modeled at all. The only time we even sketch parts of welds in the view is maybe for additional clarity on say... where a partial penetration weld is located. But that's about it...

[graemev]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I am looking for something to give both our shop guys something they can understand (picture) and our vendors something they require without having to do two separate drawings (one for our shop and one for vendors)

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Get a diagram of how to parse a welding annotation.  Print it as large as you can.  Post it conspicuously in the shop.  Wallpaper the shop with it if necessary.

If the projects and assemblies are not significantly more complicated that the one you've shown, use the weldment environment and model the welds.  It's quite helpful for the designer, once trained in its uses, as design errors can be caught at the drafting office instead of the shop floor.  The welds are then specifically visible on the drawing, particularly if using a shaded view of the assembly.

Two other things:  "Old school" shouldn't mean "Closed school" and most drawings I've seen in larger shops have (in large, bold letters at the top of the sheet,) "If in doubt, ask!"

[blair]

If it's a welded part, in our system, it becomes a Weldment. Since we both print our drawings as well as publish the full 3D models and drawings to DWF. The production floor has industrial tablets with DWF Viewer on them. It gives a copy of the IDW drawing along with the 3D model that they can rotate around and look at. All the welds show up in 3D, along with View-Reps for all the air-lines plumbing with fitting orientation. The 3D model is like a number of "pretty pictures", this seems to help the most.

I thought you hibernated in the summer time  🙂

[ajcraig99]

Do your welders not understand weld symbols!?

all info should be able to be cominucated in the weld symbols themselves.

[jyager]

Yeah...as far as being an old school crew, our welders are all union sheet metal workers and pipe fitters...a larger portion of which is pushing retirement.

If they cant read standard AWS welding symbols they wouldn't even be let behind the machine, much less pass the rigorous certification we require.

There has to be some method of control.

[jyager]

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@Anonymous wrote:

If it's a welded part, in our system, it becomes a Weldment. Since we both print our drawings as well as publish the full 3D models and drawings to DWF. The production floor has industrial tablets with DWF Viewer on them. It gives a copy of the IDW drawing along with the 3D model that they can rotate around and look at. All the welds show up in 3D, along with View-Reps for all the air-lines plumbing with fitting orientation. The 3D model is like a number of "pretty pictures", this seems to help the most.

I thought you hibernated in the summer time  🙂

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Out of curiosity what do you guys produce?

I've tried to model welds in my model once or twice and it just seemed like a really time consuming encumbered process. trying to connect welds and create staggered welds on opposite side of connections etc...just seemed infinitely easier to plug a weld symbol on the .idw/.dwg and be done with it.

[albert]

Blair, how are ya! no hibernation here, just a little summer slow down and get ready for the fall push!

Maybe one of you "pros" should create a little macro for caterpillar welds.......I picture a process like chose the view then click where you want the caterpillar to start then drag in whatever direction you want, click again and presto, your caterpillar fills in your predetermined size and spacing along that line!  if you want it to follow an arc then do the same thing with a three point arc.

I realize that welders should know weld symbolism but many of ours don't....they are still "really" good welders! We have to start adding full weld callouts on our drawings for possible outsourcing and there must be a reason the caterpillar is included in the drawing package, I was just hoping for a faster/easier way to show it. 

As far as using the weldment invironment, we already do but as one of the other posters indicated, it's very clumsy and time consuming 

[mrattray]

We don't supply our welders with any weld information... they do whatever they think is appropriate themselves. If we do communicate a special procedure it's with a leader note. How's that sound?

[albert · Accepted solution]

Sounds like home!  and if it weren't for the pesky outsourcing we could get away with it.