[zooloader]

Hi again,
I'm getting a message stating "Cannot calculate Top Surface - The weld bead has not been constructed".
I have a disc with a six point "star" mated to it. The star has a large hole in its centre with a 15mm fillet weld to the disc.
When I try to put another weld around the outside of the star, I get that message.
Changing the radius/delta/ sizes haven't helped, nor flat/convex options.

I initially only needed welds on approx. 60% of the periphery and thought this was causing the problem, so I tried going the whole way around, but still no go.

I have attached the assembly and hopefully someone can see whats wrong...

thanks.

[pixburghenat]

...your zip is missing a bunch of files that are stored in your doc/settings folder.

enat

[zooloader]

Whoops, sorry to anyone else who might have tried to look at it.
I've included each part in the assembley this time (makes sense) which should make a bit of difference I imagine.

[DareBee]

I have no direct answer (sorry I don't have time to play with your files)

On a personal note.
When the weld bead thing was first implemented, I used to use it. All that I really found is that it took extra time to make the beads and it made each weld bead into a part. It makes the assemblies really large and doesn't give any real functionality (for me anyway).
Unless you really need them for looks I recomend not bothering with beads.
I do all my welds as notes on my shop prints only.

[pixburghenat]

I tried and got the same error message you did.

I didn't see anything wrong with the files or assembly.

I'm using SWX 2007 SP4.0

I'll try again tonight, I'm going to create a new assemby.

Scott


ps enat ;-)

[JerryFlyGuy]

I'd have to agree w/ Darebee.. used to use it.. don't bother now.. unless your making something that you want to render and it "has to look exactly like the product " [ the lovely voice of your superior] then don't bother.. if you want.. put weld catililars in on the drawings but forget it in the model.. hopefully some day they make it work better w/ less PC resources but for now... it's a total waste of time.. IMHO..

[pixburghenat]

I did mess around with the files a bit more this morning.

Other than some of the sketches were not fully constrained, there was nothing wrong with any of the files.

I thought the small radius could be adding to the problem, but I don't think so now. I think either there is a bug with the weld features or what is being asked of the weld feature is beyond the capabilities of the software.

If you really need to show the welds, you could join the models and use a chamfer feature to model the weld then use a note on the drawing to call out the weld specification.

I did get the weld to work by sliding the star piece off to one side where the large radius was the only feature touching the the hub, so I figured there was some limitation with the software using the whole shape. I also tried knitting the face features, no go...then I tried a distance mate of .005", no go too. The only thing I didn't try was to surpress the center hole, not sure it would work anyway and at that point I gave up because it's not worth the trouble if the software has me jumping through hoops to make it work.

I agree with JerryFlyGuy and DareBee.

Scott