Pro/WELD enhancements?I can only provide my personal opinion based on my experience using it. The benefits of using Pro/Weld are limited but do exist, depending on the company's needs and requirements it might be beneficial. There are several disadvantages as far as I am concerned though, it isn't quick and simple unless you're just doing straight fillet welds for the most part, or your weldments are fairly small. One advantage is it can total up your welds for you, so if you have to calculate welding rod weights or something it will do that for you so some of your time creating welds can be offset by the time it would have taken you to make calculations manually. One big disadvantage is that you have a bunch of additional features that may fail sometime in the future, or need to be redefined if there are changes or failures down the road. I would say Pro-Weld will only benefit a small percentage of users and companies, it might benefit companies that do a lot of process documentation the most because you might be able to show the weld order and step by step process of more complicated weldments. Otherwise it is usually much quicker to throw on a few weld symbols and keep going. If your company is considering doing away with 2D drawings in favor of Pro-E's new functionality of dimensioning the 3D Model, Pro/Weld might be the way to go.
"Hsu Hsiao-shu" <-> wrote in message news:84803@model...
We don't find too many discussions about Pro/WELD here, do we? The last good discussion can be traced back to August 2002. I found interesting that my company's name was mentioned in one of the threads. Not really complimentary, very good point, though.
Pro/WELD is (was?) a wonderful idea, I bet you agree. Beyond creating drawings, thinking about a product development or product delivery process, how much of the waste can be eliminated from design to manufacturing if and when the welds can be fully communicated with 3D data. I frankly believe many of us must have given up spending time to "fight" it. Agree?
OK, what are your dreamed-up Pro/WELD functions that will significantly enhance your total process efficiency? Or, maybe you are willing to share your alternatives (Pro/X?) in streamlining your process. As a long time Pro/E'er and a believer of ProE's (past?) major contributions to our industry, I will summarize and report your inputs.
More specifically, I hope the following questionnaires help to excite some thoughts.
Is representing welds on your 3D geometry a valuable idea in your business?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate the importance of this idea to your business? (10 being the most important)
How important (scale 1 - 10) is it to (correctly) associate 3D weld representations to weld specifications and have the "symbols" presented on (3D) drawings?
If you are a member of product design engineering department, how often have you discussed this subject with your manufacturing engineering, manufacturing, and quality assurance counterparts? (P.S. how often have you been called upon to explain your weld symbols?)
Here, I am repeating a question in my opening. What functions are missing in Pro/WELD?
(I don't want to lead you on this. But, we do have a list on this question.)
Are fillet welds the only type of weld you put on your products? (This question is a little bit sarcastic!?)
Where is Pro/WELD at to meet your needs? Rated from 1 - 10 and 10 means fully met.
(Using Pro/E 2001 as the baseline will be OK, because Wildfire and WF2 do not bring in any break-through.)
When was the last time you discussed this subject with your management team, from design through manufacturing? Is there a champion (yourself?) on process re-engineering in your organization?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate the priority of getting enhancements on Pro/WELD to your business at this time? (I said "at this time"? It is all about priorities.)
How much time in the last two years has your company invested with PTC to bring this subject to a satisfactory level towards a solution? (I definitely will include my answer in the summary.)
What would you recommend the next steps you and I can do on this subject?
P.S. Although I haven't mentioned it, I don't mean to down play the importance of using Pro/WELD functions for structural analysis (as FEA) modeling. I will "accommodate" (bad word, I know) your inputs in my summary. Analysis folks are more resourceful, traditionally you don't wait until the software providers to provide complete solutions. It is good and bad, isn't it?
Regards, Hsiao-Shu
Hsiao-Shu Hsu
WWAg CAD Systems
Deere & Co.
515-289-3279
