Last week I taught a course at SolidWorks World called Nonwelded Weldments – Using SolidWorks Weldment Tools and 3DContentCentral to Create 80/20 Structures. I always enjoy teaching and this event was especially gratifying when a couple of the attendees told me that they had been designing 80/20 frames for years but had never thought to use the Weldment tools to do it. It will save them a bunch of time. I plan to show the steps here in future posts, but I thought I would post the PowerPoint and support files for those who are interested. -Amos
SolidWorks World Presentation
Hey Avery, I’ve been trying to do weldments with 8020 for quite a while, but always got stuck on the joints where you get protrusion into the slot from the mating part. I even made myself simplified 8020 profiles which were actually squares with the same cross section as the profiles I wanted (agree w/ you re excess grooves and vertigo by the way!) Anyway, your ppt or video isn’t up on the 2009 SWW site but finally found this site and the .ppt and figured it out. I think you could make it even more explicit in this valuable presentation that you really have to use a separate structural member for each component in the joint if you want trim/extend to work right. SW should improve this functionality as their weldment groups thing works really well except with these negative space profiles. I was going to put this in as an SW ticket; maybe we can start a movement. Extrusions are definitely the future. Anyway, thanks for solving this long time problem for me and mega props to you for putting all the profiles on 3DCC!!!!!!!