Creo Welding Application

[rmast]

Our company has recently moved from WF4 to Creo 2. The Welding Application was updated at WF5 and we are beginning to evaluate it. As a global company it does not appear to be a very simple task. I am curious about other's experiences on this topic. What works well (or not) and if any surprises were encountered along the way.

I will be at the conference in Boston and would love to have a meeting. Otherwise, post feedback here.

Thanks

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[drichards]

I don't have extensive use with it, but have used it. My personal opinion is that it's fairly good, but not necessarily easy to do without some effort to learn, or figure out. It allows you to visualize your progress and welds, and it can be displayed on drawings which I found convenient, and it provides symbols so it can save you the time you're spending creating them. The weld symbols area little like bom balloons, in that they have to be sorted out a little and moved to the desired view, and you have to be a little careful that you've created a weld feature that is going to give you the desired weld symbol. If I recall correctly, it provides you with some length values so you don't have to calculate or measure lengths.

Hopefully they can eventually improve upon it a little, or perhaps they have a good training course that would have helped me.

[rmast]

We will need to create our own training. PTC does not have any official training in PTCU/Precision LMS. Only what is available in the help files.

Here are a few topics for feedback.

• Use type Surface or Light


• Show the actual weld on a drawing or not


• Customize the symbols or use out of the box library


• How much effort to setuppre-defined preferences for various weld types


• Amount of time to redefine as changes are made to models


• Is therea lot of benefit vs. using only drawing symbols

[mlocascio]

I sure do hope that we get some constructive feedback on this weld module.
When I was working at Cummins Diesel we needed to have the weight for all of
our welds. As most of you probably know the welds don't come in as
volumetric items. They look good and that is about as useful as they get.
OH, I forgot - you can also use them to detail your weldment.



I would hope that they would make a weld option that would actually add
material to an assembly.



Michael P. Locascio

[kimndave9]

I tried the WF5 weld module and it was difficult to get it to work. I think the selection process was not clear; I would have expected fillet welds to require picking two neighboring surfaces and then Done, but I don't recall it working that way.

Instead I created datum curves to outline the limits of the welds on the assembly. It was useful because each weld got its own curve so that the weld symbols could be tracked vs each curve. Used a lot of 'offset edge.'

It was easy enough to pick the curves and the bridge them with surfaces, but that visualization wasn't as helpful as just seeing that all the welds could be accounted for and weld order.

A good package would track how much material needs to be removed for groove weld prep as well as number of passes and total material deposited based on weld schedules. A great package would indicate any orientation problems and include torch access considerations. An outstanding one would also include visibility analysis - human welders are really insistent on seeing the puddle.

There is surprisingly little information about "PTC weld module" returned by Google search.

On the other support site: http://communities.ptc.com/thread/52174 is an interesting video.

x

[davehaigh]

It was a pain in the you know what, but on one design I just bit the bullet and made solids to show all the welds.

It eliminated any confusion about what was desired.

I wouldn't advocate that as standard practice.

Typically I just create the symbols using the standard library that comes with the software.

David Haigh

[mlocascio]

I seriously believe that it is within the capabilities of PTC to provide a
real-weld modeling tool that can (and will) provide absolutely clearly
defined design intent. The current weld package could be enhanced so that
INSTEAD of putting these welds up as surfaces, it could provide solids. I,
for one, don't think that this is out of the capabilities of PTC. I believe
in PTC.



Michael P. Locascio

[dgallup]

I had to create welds long before there was a weld module and our models tend to live for decades. I also don't think any of our old licenses actually contain the weld module. So I have always just used solids for welds. Other than the lack of automatic symbols for detailing, I see no draw backs. And I only have to change the drawing symbol rather than redefine a weld feature if the symbol needs to change.

In Reply to Michael Locascio:

I seriously believe that it is within the capabilities of PTC to provide a
real-weld modeling tool that can (and will) provide absolutely clearly
defined design intent. The current weld package could be enhanced so that
INSTEAD of putting these welds up as surfaces, it could provide solids. I,
for one, don't think that this is out of the capabilities of PTC. I believe
in PTC.



Michael P. Locascio

[JLG]

You can add weld weight using the welding package.

1. Set the config option add_weld_mp to yes.

2. Assign an appropriate material to the welding rod.

3. When creating welds, be sure to set the cross section area to an appropriate value (in the Options tab of the weld feature dialog).

Creo will multiply the cross section by the weld length and assign a mass using the welding rod material.

It would be nice if it calculated the cross section for you; maybe it does and I don't know how to do it. But this method gets me the weights I need.

Kind regards,
Janet Grove

[drichards]

You must be merging weldments into a part to use solids to represent welds?

[rmast]

So far no detailed responses from any companies actively using the application.

Some feedback that others are interested or would like improvements to the existing tools.

Maybe interested parties could get together at the conference during Wednesday's networking breakfast?

[AndyHermanson]

I think at the TC meetings in Anaheim we talked about this and they were going to put a task force together. Not sure if I have heard anything since. Some people from AGCO and Deere were on it I know....

[rmast]

Summary:

• There is a lot of interst from others regarding the weld app


• Very few have indicated they are actively using it


• Nobody provided meaningful details of their process, setup, etc


• Offline feedback - some customers are requesting PTC make improvements to the tool

If anyone would like to meet regarding this topic at the conference send me a message.