Solidworks and Shop Drawings

[JGard1985]

Greetings all,

I have a project coming up that's a simple bolted/welded steel frame. Typically I'd use weldments to model the whole thing, but the top level BOM always lists everything , beams, baseplates, gussets, etc as separate items.

To accelerate the project, I'd like to split off individual "shop drawings" of each fabricated piece (e.g. a column, with welded baseplate, welded gusset)

Each fabricated piece is a weldment and the fabricated pieces comprise a larger weldment frame.

My question is what is the best hierarchy for setting something like this up

Is the entire frame an assembly of weldment sections (parts)? It seems like I would loose functionality

Or is there a way to make a weldment (frame) comprised of subweldments (fabricated sections), comprised of subweldments (baseplates, beams and gussets)?

Thank you

Jeff
Pipe Stress Analysis
Finite Element Analysis

http://www.xceed-eng.com

 

[berkshire]

Try using sub assemblies in your model then make shop drawings for each sub assembly.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[Jboggs]

Are you aware that you can create separate views of each weldment component using Relative Views?

 

[drawoh]

JGard1985,

If I have a frame I am bolting together, I want to call up the nuts, bolts, washers, and the label that says "CLIMB AT YOUR OWN RISK". You need to do a standard SolidWorks assembly. This can be configured to not search down the tree.

If some of the pieces of this frame are weldments, I would use SolidWorks' weldment feature. Do you really need a separate drawing of each piece of the weldment? Why not use detail views? It is not as if you can inspect the components separate from the weldment.

--
JHG

 

[SBaugh]

I make enclosures all the time and I make the weldment as a single part and I make a drawing of the weldment and show each weldment body within the drawing detailed. If I have bolts that are added at a later step, then I move my frame into an assembly and add the bolts. Then I get a BOM with the frame as one part and all the fasteners. I don't think the assembly BOM should show all the weldments, because you have to build the weldment prior. Agreed, the weldment in and of itself is an assembly, but the way SW allows you to make the drawing it's very much like an assembly. See attached.

Scott Baugh, CSWP
CAD Systems Manager
Evapar

http://www.evapar.com

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

faq731-376

 

[ctopher]

I usually have an exploded view on sheet 1 with a BOM. Sheet 2 and others have details and parts shown.

Chris, CSWP
SolidWorks '17
ctophers home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[Brad805]

Is this to be fabbed in your own shop or is it going to a sub-contractor? If it is going to be subbed out and there is a reasonable amount of steel, I would make sure what you are doing will be used. SW is not ideal for structural steel and is used by few in North America.

 

[SBaugh]

Brad805 - How is not ideal for structural steel? I use it often to make weldments I don't understand your statement?

Scott Baugh, CSWP
CAD Systems Manager
Evapar

http://www.evapar.com

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

faq731-376

 

[SwinnyGG]

An assembly which as a bunch of parts bolted together is not a weldment. It's an assembly.

You should create a single part file for any individual component of your frame which is fully welded in the shop and terminates at each bolted interface.

Each of those part files then goes into an assembly file which includes all part files and all fasteners/hardware/labels/anchors/fittings/whatever else gets bolted on.

Each assembly and each part file have their own drawing.

 

[Brad805]

We have detailed structural steel in Tekla and tried SW on one project. SW was dreadful, but the drawings were prettier. Most of your large fab shops use Tekla (XSteel in the 90's) and Fabtrol and are heavily automated. The autodesk detailing package is popping up more commonly now too because the cost per seat is much lower. The advantage of Tekla is all your parts and assemblies are maintained inside a single file. Tekla also looks after all your numbering automatically based on how you assemble the parts (field weld or bolt vs shop). Connection detailing to North American standards is much easier in Tekla as well because it is setup for that and the built in custom component tool can be easily adapted to work for your own shop. I have tried some of the aftermarket detailing add-ons for SW, and they are not great. We ended up making our own using hidden parts that were excluded in the BOM.

I know that all you mechanical guys have much better setups for maintaining parts and I understand that. You make a part and build it for years. A structural steel fabricator will make a part once and that is it. Standard parts are largely a thing of the past in the structural steel world. Does that make sense? No, but that is part of the reality of BIM and arch's that layout rooms based on furniture.

A simple example to demonstrate the key underlying problem of SW for structural steel can be shown with a single column. Lets say we have a column with mid height clips for a second floor, two clips for a roof beam, two brace clips, base plate and a cap plate. That may require 9 part drawings, and one assembly drawing. That is all handled as a single assembly within Tekla perfectly for the needs of a structural steel shop that only makes that assembly once. SW is also a memory pig compared to Tekla or others once your model get large. It is important to have that level of detail in the mechanical world, but in the structural world nobody cares beyond the physical dimensions and if it fits.

All those plates and holes are drilled or cut with automatic equipment. Even the very low tech shops have CNC plasma tables now. The behind the scenes setup to make an automatic saw or CNC do that without a ton of silly .dxf files is quite involved, and not easily adapted to SW. Machines can accept .dxf files, but that is incredibly slow if you have to deal with hundreds or thousands of parts each day. I suggest you check what the fabricator would like before you spend a lot of time detailing. If they are automated or are required by contract to submit shop drawings I would not spend much time other than making a clear set of drawings that can be easily re-created to their standards.

Now if this is for a group of simple weldments totaling less than 5ton, then SW is fine. We use it for misc structures a lot as we can import the models into point clouds very easily to check fit. Those structures tend to be at oil and gas sites, so adding the mechanical parts is much easier in SW. If it is a frame to hold up some other larger mechanical equipment then it can be fine too as the amount of bolted connections I see is much less in those.

 

[SwinnyGG]

Based on what I know of Tekla (which is very basic) and Solidworks (which is very close to as advanced as is possible) SW COULD be configured to operate smoothly in that system- but doing so would require a VAR with extensive knowledge of the differences between general mechanical design and the type of projects Tekla is used for, and would require extensive setups of design libraries and other parts of a database system to make everything work and live.

With Tekla in the market I see no reason why investing so much time in refining a SolidWorks setup to duplicate Tekla's capabilities would make any sense.

 

[SBaugh]

Thanks for your explanation Brad805. I had never heard of Tekla until now.

We farm out all our fabrication (structural or sheet metal), all our engineering is done in-house. All the vendors we deal with are either using Solidworks or some form of basic AutoCAD for DXF files only. Occasionally we will get someone with Pro-E or NX.



Scott Baugh, CSWP
CAD Systems Manager
Evapar

http://www.evapar.com

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

faq731-376

 

[Brad805]

SW is better IMO for sheet metal. I have seen a few using that with their CNC bending equipment. We had a few shops using SW for a while for all their projects. That was mainly because a seat for Tekla starts at around $30k and it takes time to learn and implement. Now with Autodesk Advance trying to get into the market some have switched to that. We still see CAD files as well from time to time.

Tekla is sticks and straight pieces. Single curvature is about the limit, but that works well for 90% of the structural projects since that is what we buy at the mills. We added SW when we were working on some sites that had mechanical equipment. The tekla models we created to show electric motors were terrible and it was too time consuming to create models for different motor sizes. Few of the vendors we were dealing with had or would share STEP files.

I suppose you could setup SW to work with all the equipment, but what a job. I use SW with my woodwork CNC, and nothing from SW is setup for that material out of the box. Even if you took that time it would be hard to compete with the modeling speed for this type of project. The custom component tool in Tekla where you touch two parts with the custom component and it automatically creates your connections is remarkably fast. The Aussies have a few add-ons for SW that try to do this, but they were not as smooth when I tested them a few years back.

 

[SBaugh]

I think its a matter of your level of expertise in either of the two CAD software systems. I have been using SW since its release in '95 and I know the software very well. I have not found much that I cannot do with it. My biggest complaint is their Toolbox fasteners. That's why I made my own. At 30k it makes more sense to me to buy SW and make it work for what is needed. I feel SW can handle weldments and structure just fine. Tekla may very well be easier, but at 30k I can spend a few more hours coming with a solution to get to where I want.

,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
CAD Systems Manager
Evapar

http://www.evapar.com

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

faq731-376

 

[SwinnyGG]

I am a SolidWorks devotee for sure, but I would NOT want to use it to design and entire skyscraper with enough information to provide robust BIM and detailing of every single component. At a certain scale SW becomes unworkable- which is why systems like Tekla and Revit and other BIM tools exist.

 

[SBaugh]

Agreed jgKRI I would not want to, but I have seen where there are those that have and have had good success. There was a story on SW forum about 2 years ago where someone was making a large structure in the marine industry and shows images of it, but I cannot find it to save my life.

Scott Baugh, CSWP
CAD Systems Manager
Evapar

http://www.evapar.com

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

faq731-376

 

[Brad805]

There is a large precast concrete fabricator in Florida that was using SW for detailing their panels at one time. We have modeled a few precast parts to clearly illustrate their construction and I do not see how using it for a complete project would be efficient. The exploded views are awesome to show the actual makeup of a composite sandwich panel. I guess sometimes when all you have is a hammer in your hand everything looks like a nail.

 

[SBaugh]

I found this software that might be of some use to those building structures.

https://skyciv.com/pricing/enterprise/

https://skyciv.com/3d-structural-analysis-software-features/

Reasonably priced as well.

I use this site for their free engineering tools they offer.

Scott Baugh, CSWP
CAD Systems Manager
Evapar

http://www.evapar.com

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

faq731-376