Best practice for framing? 1

[Spaceballster]

Hi, just a question for thoes of you who are proficient with framing. We've designed a piling template, which consists of a quarter circle structure built mainly out of square tubes, three stories high. It's become some kind of monster full of errors and parts disappearing so I've redone the entire assembly. In the new version I've kept the framing seperate, so I've inserted the frame.asm into a higher assembly and then added all other steel plates etc. This seemed to work better and also this assembly was much smaller (in bytes) than the monster assembly full of errors.

Can anyone say if this is common? Do you keep your framing seperate and insert these into a higher assembly before adding all other welding parts?

Regards,

Griffin

 

[teebarr]

Yes Griffin, this is the method I use. It is a bit more manageable and helps for reuse or if you want to swap the whole frame with one with a different wall thickness. If you are on ST5 then you will get the benefit of the frame edit local menu which really helps. I would also put a button on your toolbar for the "Edit Parent Sub-assembly" command (look under "all commands" in the "customize ribbon" box by rightclick on ribbon) which allows you to pick a part and it will open its subassembly withot having to wait to select from the quickpick list.
Tony

 

[Spaceballster]

That is indeed one of the most usefull buttons out there. Strange SE makes you search for it and then they couldn't even bother to make a pictogram for it!

Framing is nice, unless you've got curved members, in which case it's a royal waste of my time and effort!!

 

[Spaceballster]

Any tips on how to make curved members join straight members without resorting to assembly features to get a proper cut?

 

[Spaceballster]

I mean come on!

 

[teebarr]

Griffin
It is possible if you are on ST5.
Follow instruction in attached image.
Tony

 

[Spaceballster]

Super! Just what I need!
Unfortunately we're still on ST4. This post has managed to make me more convincing to upgrade to ST5, so this is something we'll be doing very soon.