Re: Welding of pipes

SW has never handled welds well in real world situations. First SW
added weld functionality to assemblies and in this situation it would
create a "weld bead" for you and add it as a component in the
assembly. However, it did not handle gaps which are frequently
necessary when providing for fitup and warpage control. It also did
not handle even slightly complex weld scenarios. And there was the
issue of revision control and naming of the automatically created bead
parts. With PDM that is a real big issue. I will have to admit that I
have explored this functionality since SW made it possible to keep
parts within the assembly, but my PDM system wouldn't allow that in
any event.

Then SW added weld functionality to parts. Although a weldment could
be created very quickly there seems to be a lack of ability to create
the gaps necessary in the real world.

In either case SW would have problems with welds involving plate
fabrications that had  plates that came together at skewed angles,
something we did frequently.

The long and short is that I don't make an effort to model the weld
bead unless there is some special reason like a detailed FEA analysis
or for an illustration. This is simply due to CAD limitation. I just
put the callouts in the print.

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