CAD Forum

Is it possible to create serial numbers for cut list items i.e. in weldments?
Do I have to use 'save bodies' for this? (I really don't want to...)
When bending a weldment, it assigns a new body & a new name to the bent cut-item - how to prevent that? Is it possible without using save bodies? (Thus loosing the benefits of a weldment....)

• What are best practices regarding the naming problem? Just rename them to serial # - A,B,C
• What are best practices for bent weldment parts? Model them as individual parts or virtual parts?

How do you tackle this problem?
We would like to use weldments in certain situations, but up until now, those problems have prevented us from doing it.

berg_lauritz wrote: ↑Tue Jun 29, 2021 12:09 pm Is it possible to create serial numbers for cut list items i.e. in weldments?

I'm not sure I'm following exactly what you are trying to do. Do you mean you want the name of the cut list item to show up as a serial number in the weldment BOM?

If that is the case all you need to do is rename the cutlist item to the serial number and then in the description have that be the cutlist name.

But I'm not at all sure if that is what you are talking about.

Yes and no @MJuric . I know, that I can name bodies as I please, but how do I link it to a serial # in PDM i.e.?

Additionally each change to that body results in a renamed body.
Which means, that if I bend a weldment i.e. - every part of that multi-body-part has a new name (i.e. Flex[1], Flex[2], ...).
Putting those on a drawing, results in different names for each body:
the body named part#1 is not bent
the same body Flex[1] is bent

Do I need to rename it again & again? This creates a ton of work & reduces the viability of weldments for us, because the work we have to put in afterwards just becomes

Plus we don't want to rely on naming cut-list parts manually.

Pretty sure you can't use serial numbers on this (Not that I've found). Generally, weldment part numbers would be assigned to the weldment library file. You wouldn't have a separate part number for each piece of 2x2x.25 square tubing cut for example. Are you saying you want a unique number for each cut piece you create?

How are you bending the weldment? Wouldn't you just sketch it already bent?

The solution we have used is to assign a custom cutlist property such as "Part Name" or "PartNo" rather than using "Description", because Description is used to describe the material. In this case it's 3" square tubing. See the screenshot below for an example.
These fields are populated using Property Tab Builder, so it's fast and very intuitive for a user to fill out. For example, "Barcode" is automatically derived from "PartNo" with no user input (sorry, forgot that this isn't possible for weldment-level, only for parts). As far as bringing that into PDM, you'd just have to try it.

... Are you saying you want a unique number for each cut piece you create?

How are you bending the weldment? Wouldn't you just sketch it already bent?

Some weldment parts would probably need a serial # or something similar, because we may outsource them to somebody with a tube-laser (i.e.).

Yes, we can sketch it bent already, but what about drilled holes, that get placed when it's still flat? A flat pattern would be nice for that. The majority of our weldment parts has at least 2-3 holes in it. @jcapriotti



@mike miller so how do you propagate the barcode? This looks exactly like something we are searching for. We are fairly new to PDM though...

berg_lauritz wrote: ↑Tue Jun 29, 2021 3:07 pm Some weldment parts would probably need a serial # or something similar, because we may outsource them to somebody with a tube-laser (i.e.).

Yes, we can sketch it bent already, but what about drilled holes, that get placed when it's still flat? A flat pattern would be nice for that. The majority of our weldment parts has at least 2-3 holes in it. @jcapriotti



@mike miller so how do you propagate the barcode? This looks exactly like something we are searching for. We are fairly new to PDM though...

Sorry, I forgot that you can't link CLPRP values together. (We use it for the part level PTB interface.) But the general concept of creating custom cutlist properties through PTB still applies.

As far as the tube laser flattening goes, there's an excellent solution for that. Check out the attached file:

@mike miller , can you please make a video/gif of that? We only have 2017 SP5 installed... (working hard on changing that!)

CLPRP values? PTB? Can you elaborate on that for a beginner?

berg_lauritz wrote: ↑Tue Jun 29, 2021 3:38 pm @mike miller , can you please make a video/gif of that? We only have 2017 SP5 installed... (working hard on changing that!)

CLPRP values? PTB? Can you elaborate on that for a beginner?

CLPRP means Cut List Property. It's the cutlist version of $PRP but it does not have full functionality. $PRP (and to some extent $CLPRP) is used in file properties, linked notes, etc. PTB is Property Tab Builder. https://help.solidworks.com/2021/englis ... 67a052#Pg0

Here is a video of the laser tubing.

@mike miller that is a neat workaround!

We basically only would need to flex those tubes. Here a more accurate description of what we need to do!