topic Re: Welding Symbols - Enclose Text in Circle in Inventor Forum

Welding Symbols - Enclose Text in Circle

0x3FA5 — Tue, 26 Mar 2019 18:33:14 GMT

Greetings.

For some reason I am not able to find any other enclosing form than a box.

I usually enclose the notes in a circle, since that way it is visually connected to BOM items.

How do I change that "5" to be in a circle?

Thank you.

Re: Welding Symbols - Enclose Text in Circle

jtylerbc — Tue, 26 Mar 2019 19:14:55 GMT

You don't. Everything in a weld symbol carries some sort of meaning. There is no defined meaning for circling a piece of text in the tail note, so it isn't provided as an option.

What exactly do you mean by "visually connected to BOM items"? Are you saying you're trying to make it look like a balloon?

Re: Welding Symbols - Enclose Text in Circle

0x3FA5 — Tue, 26 Mar 2019 19:26:22 GMT

Yes, this is exactly what I am trying to do.

The number in the balloon is the number of the welding rod in the BOM.

Re: Welding Symbols - Enclose Text in Circle

0x3FA5 — Tue, 26 Mar 2019 19:32:42 GMT

BTW,

There is no defined meaning for putting a piece of text in the tail note in a box, but it is there.

You can put any type of reference in the tail; box, circle, hexagon or any other, defined by the company internal standards.

Re: Welding Symbols - Enclose Text in Circle

jtylerbc — Tue, 26 Mar 2019 20:22:00 GMT

That's true. What I meant was that Inventor's available settings in the weld dialog box basically give you the bare minimum of what's needed to conform to standards, and very little extra beyond that. So in general, there isn't much there for helping with company-specific notations.

I would suggest making a sketch symbol that looks like a balloon (same size, color, etc. as your balloon settings), with field text for the item number. Type a space in the weld tail text box so the tail will appear. There will be an attachment point that you can tie a symbol leader to (located where the leader of this flag note is pointing). You'll see a little glyph when you're in the right spot).

If you click that spot and then immediately hit Enter, you can snap the symbol's insert point directly to that attachment point without a visible leader. I left the leader in my example to make it clearer where you need to aim to hit the attachment point.

Re: Welding Symbols - Enclose Text in Circle

0x3FA5 — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 11:35:37 GMT

Thank you.

Looks like Inventor gives you the bare minimum in any direction.

Just surprised that it allows you to create custom shapes in sketches, instead of limiting you to the circle and rectangle only, lol.

Re: Welding Symbols - Enclose Text in Circle

jtylerbc — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 13:11:33 GMT

Is there another software you're aware of that does actually let you insert item balloons (or something that looks like one) directly into weld symbol tail notes?

If so, how is that set up? Some sort of a special character insertion (like how we would insert a Ø, °, or ± character), or an actual UI "Insert Balloon" button?

Re: Welding Symbols - Enclose Text in Circle

0x3FA5 — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 13:45:18 GMT

I know it is silly to compare the both, but in Solidworks you can select text and one of the UI menus allows you to enclose the text in one of many predefined shapes.

Re: Welding Symbols - Enclose Text in Circle

0x3FA5 — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 13:40:48 GMT

Have now the same problem with the notes in the drawing. The common practice is to enclose the note number in triangle, if the note is related to an entity on the drawing. Am i missing something?

Re: Welding Symbols - Enclose Text in Circle

jtylerbc — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 13:44:02 GMT

I see. So it's not quite a real, smart "Balloon" feature in the tail note, but may be an easier way of faking one. I can see where that could be useful.

Re: Welding Symbols - Enclose Text in Circle

0x3FA5 — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 13:48:25 GMT

I apologize, I was answering something else 🙂

Actually, in SW you can link the the balloon number to be drawn from the actual BOM, so it is not fake at all.

Re: Welding Symbols - Enclose Text in Circle

jtylerbc — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 13:58:14 GMT

No, you're not missing anything. That has a similar "do it yourself" answer. There's no built-in system for that sort of thing (it has been asked for on the Idea forums, probably more than once). As a result, there are probably a lot of different variations of solutions people have come up with for this.

My example image in Post #5 actually shows part of my solution. In the US, what you show is not all that common - the triangle would be one of the two common shapes for a revision tag. For the purpose you're describing, we typically use "flag notes". I used my Flag Note symbol to stand in for your "Fake Balloon" symbol in my example, instead of actually making one.

The way I handle it is to have two versions of the symbol - one with the prompted text entry for the note number, and one that is empty (in my case, the empty one is also slightly smaller). In the notes area, I manually place the empty flag over the relevant note number, and use the version with the prompted text to actually tag the entity in the drawing view.

It's not a perfect solution, but it's the best I've come up with for now. I would love it if Inventor had some kind of built-in tool for this, but currently it doesn't.