SolidWorks 2011 Assemblies Bible - Matt Lombard [165]
If you are working with surface bodies, you must use Insert Part or Insert Into New Part. The other most important strength belongs to the Save Bodies feature, which makes the child accessible from the parent and identifies the assembly in the parent.
Chapter 20: Using Weldments
In This Chapter
Using 3D sketching techniques
Creating weldment-specific features
Adding non-structural components
Creating sub-weldments
Understanding cut lists
Placing the weldment cut list on a drawing
Working with weldments tutorial
Weldments in SolidWorks are built on structural profiles along sketch entities in a multi-body part environment. Weldment members can be straight or curved, you can make them using standard or custom profiles, and you can build them from both 2D and 3D sketches. A cut list within the part keeps track of the length of each profile that is needed to fabricate the weldment.
Weldments are specialized parts that are similar in some ways to sheet metal parts: they are identified as a special kind of part by a Weldment feature in the FeatureManager, and you use a special set of tools to create and edit them. The specialized part enables specialized functionality such as cut lists, special body trimming functions, and gap creation between bodies.
You can use weldments for round or rectangular tubular structures, structures made from channels, flanged sections, standard or custom shapes, gussets, and end caps, and they can also represent weld beads in the part. You can also use weldments to create structures that are bolted together, structural aluminum extrusion frames, vinyl window frames, and wooden frames and structures, and you can put them into assemblies with other parts such as castings, sheet metal, and fabricated plates.
Weldments are part files in SolidWorks, but they are included in this book because the functionality is similar to assemblies in several ways. The cut lists are similar to BOMs, and weldment drawings have some of the same concerns as assembly drawings. Weldments can be made from individual parts, and can even be included with other parts in assemblies to create a finished product. Strictly speaking, weldments are parts, but after working with them for a while you may agree that they have more in common with assemblies than parts.
Sketching in 3D
The 3D sketch is an important tool for creating weldments (and many other features) in SolidWorks. Structural frames are a large part of the work that is typically done using weldment functionality in SolidWorks, and frames are often represented as 3D wireframes. You can represent 3D wireframes with a combination of 2D sketches on different planes, with a single 3D sketch, or with a combination of 2D and 3D sketches. If you have confidence in your ability to use 3D sketches, then that is the best way to go. Three-dimensional sketches can be challenging, but they are certainly manageable if you know what to expect from them.
Navigating in space
When drawing a line in a 3D sketch, the cursor and Origin initially look like those shown in Figure 20.1. The large red Origin is called the space handle, with the red legs indicating the active sketching plane. Any sketch entities that you draw lie on this plane. The cursor also indicates the plane to which the active sketching plane is parallel. The XY graphic shown in Figure 20.1 does not mean that the sketch is going to be on the XY plane, just parallel to it.
FIGURE 20.1
The space handle and the 3D sketch cursor
Pressing the Tab key causes the active sketching plane to toggle between XY, YZ, and ZX. The active sketching plane indication does not create any sketch relations; it just lets you know the orientation of the sketch entities that are being placed. If you want to create a skew line that is not parallel to any standard plane, you