SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Chapter 31: Using Weldments

FIGURE 31.5

The Weldment Properties interface

Structural Member

A Structural Member is the basic building unit of weldments in SolidWorks. You can create a
Structural Member by extruding a profile along one or more path segments, and it may result in a
single body or multiple bodies. The path segments may be in the form of 2D or 3D sketches.

Note
A single Structural Member feature may create multiple bodies, with each body corresponding to a single cut
length of stock. In other words, the feature name “Structural Member” does not necessarily refer to a single
piece of the weldment, although it may. n

One limitation of the use of sketches in Structural Member features is that only two selected sketch

entities may intersect at any one location. For example, at each corner of a cube, three path seg-

ments intersect, and so you can only select two of those elements at one time to create a Structural

Member feature. Because each of the path segments requires a piece of metal, the leftover path seg-

ments may be used by a second Structural Member feature.

When creating the sketch for the weldment, it is important to decide what the sketch represents.

For example, does it represent the centerline of the structural elements, or does it represent a cor-

ner? You can orient and position structural shape profiles relative to the frame sketch in several

ways, with positioning at the shape centroid being probably the most intuitive for closed shapes

and a corner being most intuitive for angle channels.

Figure 31.6 shows a single 3D sketch of a simple frame and a Structural Member feature in the

process of creation. You must select the standard first, then the type, and finally the size. A limited

number of profiles come with the software, and although it is very likely that you will need to cre-

ate some custom profiles, fortunately they are very easy to create.

To access a large number of weldment profiles in various standards, open the Design Library and

click the SolidWorks Content icon. Under that, the Weldments folder has several zip files contain-

ing weldment profiles. Ctrl+click an icon to download the file, and then extract the contents of the

Zip file to the library location you have established for your weldment profiles.