Piping routing in sworks?

[10mm]

Does anyone use routing to do complex welded piping? The routing library consists of only flanges and pipe. I am curious if there are users that have built up libraries of parts and believes that routing is a good tool. Cadworx is great and has a full library, but it is not compatible with sworks since importing and exporting iges files is just a pain. I dont understand why sworks doesn't focus more attention to routing and supply a full library of standard type parts. It seems to be more of a toy than a useful tool.

There is no situation so bad that you cant make it worse. Cmdr_Hadfield

 

[drawoh]

10mm,

SolidWorks routing allows you to extrude profiles along elaborate 3D routing sketches. If you are doing pipe routing, you need a library of parts, including elbows, unions and valves. Presumably, you want to extract a BOM from your drawing. Maybe you can make the weldment feature do this. Otherwise, you are doing an assembly.

--
JHG

 

[SBaugh]

Have you already downloaded the libraries that SW offers you? See image.

Scott Baugh, CSWP
CAD Systems Manager
Evapar

http://www.evapar.com

"If it's not broke, Don't fix it!"

faq731-376

 

[Sparweb]

Since routing is an add-in ONLY in Premium, and we use Professional, we've had to make some workarounds.

Note: Professionals do not do piping routing. Only amateurs do. Thank you for clarifying that Dassault.

Today I received a XYZ point file from a tubing bending sub-contractor who is using a CNC tube bender. They also have a tubing scanner, which uses magnetic pick-ups to measure the coordinates of a tubing run of any complexity. They gave me a spreadsheet with all the points, but without Routing, I couldn't use it directly with Solidworks.

Then it occurred to me that I could input the points into AutoCAD and connect them with lines. From Excel, it was easy to export the points to a text file and create a script, which automated the input of all of the points to AutoCAD. 60 seconds later, I had my 3-dimensional line.

After down-saving the ACAD dwg to an early version (SW won't open a 2018 dwg), the lines were opened easily as 3-dimensional curves, upon which I could immediately create either a composite curve or a new 3D sketch and fillet all the corners to the center-line bend radius. 240 seconds elapsed time.

To make the Sweep out of this path, I needed a plane, normal to the origin, a sketch, and the circular cross-section. Total elapsed time, 5 minutes.
Note: the first time I did this, it took longer because I had to try various options before finding the right ones. The 4th tubing run took 5 minutes.

STF

 

[SBaugh]

Yes, you can import XYZ points into SW and SW will give you the curve of the data points? The feature name is "Curve through XYZ points"

The file must be *.txt, you can easily export the file from Excel to text. You will have to open the file in notepad and resave it. At least I always have to, otherwise, it fails when you import it. Open a new part, select "Curve through XYZ Points" and import your text file. Click OK and you are done and you have a generated curve. I guarantee it will take less than 5 minutes to do.

Attached is a quick text file, just rename the ext to *.txt and try it out.

Scott Baugh, CSWP
CAD Systems Manager
Evapar

http://www.evapar.com

"If it's not broke, Don't fix it!"

faq731-376

 

[Sparweb]

Hi Scott,
Thanks for the suggestion. Yes I tried "Curve through XYZ points" on my data.
That delivers a spline. Allows no further editing, not even tangency of the ends IIRC. Very swoopy but not appropriate.
What I was importing was the routing of tubing that has been bent at specific locations.
Steel and aluminum tubing is bent in tools with a fixed (circular) radius and remains straight between these bends.
The model has to resemble straight material that is bent, and the CL of the tube must curve at a specific radius which is defined by the shop tools.
The drawing must enable direct dimensioning of the straight segments, the curve radius and bend angles accurately.
The workflow that I described above delivered the required result.

While we're on the subject, may I ask: Can points be entered into SW directly, simply by using XYZ coordinates? If I could have entered the list of reference geometry points, I wouldn't have used AutoCAD at all. I could have connected them with 3D-Sketch line segments and been on my merry way.


STF

 

[Sparweb]

Wait... Is the spline fit through the points I entered, or vice-versa? Maybe I could have ignored the spline and just kept the points...? I should check next week.

STF

 

[SBaugh]

Yes, you can enter it either manually per the same command or import a text file.

The curve is through the points. You can create planes and sketches using the curve data.

Scott Baugh, CSWP
CAD Systems Manager
Evapar

http://www.evapar.com

"If it's not broke, Don't fix it!"

faq731-376