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Steel Tube Multibody Part


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I'm building some steel tube multibody parts and I'm having trouble adding a property to the weld cut list table. We have three "styles" of tubes that tell the steel shop where to put the holes. For example, style 1 has no holes; style 2 has holes in one direction; style 3 has holes in two directions. The holes are all 1/4" thru with a 1/2" countersink.

 

The problem is, I have no way (that I know of) to extract that kind of information from a multibody part. The cut list will properly ID the steel based on the number of holes and what direction they go in, but I need a way to include a style number in the table. I'd rather have this done automatically rather than manually add it in, if possible.

 

Got any ideas?

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I dont know off hand but when you are in a multibody part go to Insert>Features> Create Assembly. It will create an assembly from your multibody parts with Fixed relations for all the components how they are in your part file. This should work great for weldments and will give each solid body its own part file linked back to the original multi-body.

 

Are you hoping that solidworks will know the difference if the part has no holes vs 2 holes vs 4? or is there something else. How do you pass this info along to the shop?

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This should clear it up a bit. After the tubes, holes and weldments are placed, SolidWorks understands that even though six of the tubes are the exact same length they are different because of the hole patterns. In the first PDF (Standard Result), items 1, 4 and 6 are all 28-1/2" long. #1 has no holes (style 1), #4 has holes in one direction (style 2) and #6 has holes in two directions (style 3). I need to be able to extract that data as a field or property to populate the cut list.

 

The second PDF (What I Need) is what I'm looking for.

Steel Frame - Standard Result.pdf

Steel Frame - What I Need.pdf

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Sorry, i got super busy with a few other things. ill take a look at this shortly....

 

How do you model these tubes? Do you pattern them, are multiples done in a single sketch and then the holes added after, used Insert>part?

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I did the tubes as a multibody weldment. One rectangle sketch on the front plane, and a 3D sketch for the rear square and the four horizontal legs going front to back. After the multibody was made, I added the holes and welds. Added a few configurations for different widths and then made the drawing.

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Well i played around with it a bit this morning and I am coming up blank for adding a custom property that can be linked to the drawing and used in a Multibody part like this. You can create weld beads at the assembly level as well as custom properties for each part which can be carried into a BOM. You can still use your multi-body part file and export each part into its own file and then into an assembly. You can do this rather quickly by creating your multibody, going to Insert>Features>Save Bodies... This allows you to make an assembly from your weldment bodies that are fixed in place in an assembly. There is a "copy custom properties to new parts" check box that will applicable here. With SW2011 improvements to welds you can go to Insert>assembly features>weld beads within the assembly and apply weld beads at that level rather than the part level. This should still allow the use of the new Weld bead table inside the drawing file.

 

Let me know if you think this will work for your procedure and ill try to give you a little more info on the steps.

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