Create Part Level Weld Preps in Weldment / Frame Generator

[will.astill]

Idea:

Add the ability to apply a weld prep (chamfer) to a part file from within the Weldment (assembly) environment or in Frame Generator instead of it being at the assembly level.

Reason: 

At the moment, it is only possible to create a weld prep feature at the assembly level in a weldment or frame generator.

In an assembly company it is sometimes more efficient to have the sub-supplier add the weld preps to a part before delivery so that the welder doesn't need to prep the parts.

This means adding the preps to the part drawing - rather than on a welded assembly drawing, which means the chamfer needs to be in the part document instead of the assembly.

This is also better when re-using parts, as the prep is applied to all parts with one instruction and only needs fixing in one place if it goes wrong when making changes.

Currently, this is achieved by opening the part file and making the change there, potentially losing the prep when a frame is altered and having to add it back in.

It would be better and faster if this could be an "assembly driven" feature in the weldment or frame generator environment, that applied to the part file when working with the frame generator or with weldments.

Option 1:

In a Weldment, click Preparation, then apply a Chamfer feature.

or

In a frame generator session, click a new Chamfer option:

Select the "Apply to Part File" option to make this a part-level feature, rather than an assembly level feature.

[kacper.suchomski]

Hi

Have you considered using Model States to represent the stages of production of individual parts?

[will.astill]

Yes.

We use a combination of model states for pre/post prep states in parts.

This is more of an idea for productivity improvement in the weldment and frame gen environments.

It's great being able to use weldments and frame gen for smaller parts that tend to get prepped on fab, but a lot of our work is for large scale manufacturing, where customers want beam preps applying to parts by a sub supplier. The sub can easily apply the preps as they cut the parts, whereas in assembly it can mean hours of prep work.

For us, this means doing all the frame gen work and then opening each part file and applying weld preps there since preps applied in weldment are at the assembly level and don't propagate down to the part.

It just seemed like it would be nice to be able to do this in the frame gen as it's a really good tool (like with beam notches etc.).

Looks like not many people have the same issue though given the lack of votes. 😞

[jtylerbc]

At my company we have issues with this for a slightly different reason.  Our plate nesting software only sees features within the part, resulting in it omitting weld preps modeled at the assembly level.  This has the effect of making the Preparation environment in Weldments essentially useless to us.  We are forced to model them at the part level to avoid this issue.  

Technically this wouldn't be a problem for us with Frame Generator, as those parts wouldn't be fed into our nesting software anyway.  But we tend to model weld preps for FG parts at the part level as well, just for consistency.

[swalton]

I'd want the weld prep features to be added to the sub-component model tree as editable chamfers/extrudes/whatever.  I want to edit them from either the weld or part environment.  

Other weld improvements I'd like to see:

1. Link the browser name of a weld feature (solid or cosmetic) to the tail of the 2d and 3d annotations, plus the browser entry for the annotation
2. Each 3d weld feature as an independent solid, not a single solid for all
3. Weld caterpillars in the drawing driven by cosmetic weld features
4. Cosmetic weld feature area driven by the weld annotation, not manual area calculations
5. Weld report in the drawing that automatically updates.  Current manual export workflow is tedious
6. Weld report that includes the length for groove welds
7. Better control of which weld annotations are displayed when importing them to drawing views.  It is very difficult to keep track of 50-300 weld features and annotations when working with large weldments.