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Routing Opinions

Routing Opinions

Routing Opinions

(OP)
Hey all,

My boss recently tasked me with determining how useful our seat of routing would be in the welded manifold we build on a regular basis and whether or not we could expand it into our threaded piping. I've done some reading in the help menu on routing, after an exhaustive search of the web looking for some tutorials or something related to routing. Among the things I've noticed that concern me is if you have one pipe being welded into another instead of using a weld tee SW reports the length of the pipe as the length of the sketch line, with the statement that the actual length that the pipe should be cut to. Anybody have an opinion on this or routing in general?

RE: Routing Opinions

Before you get into designing with it, you need to understand how to use it. Its not the same animal as SW is. I suggest you get the igetit tutorial on Routing.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP pc2
www.scottjbaugh.com
"If it's not broke, Don't fix it!"
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

RE: Routing Opinions

It's worth the time if you use it for piping and wiring. Only if you use it a lot. IMO, not worth the $$ if you don't use it often. It does some cool stuff.

Chris
SolidWorks 07 4.0/PDMWorks 07
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 04-21-07)

RE: Routing Opinions

SW08 the tools get better... I just hope the tutorials from SW get better, SW07 were very bad and were worthless IMO.... the were very hard to follow, especially when you went to the next step of the process.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP pc2
www.scottjbaugh.com
"If it's not broke, Don't fix it!"
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

RE: Routing Opinions

(OP)
I've had trouble finding any tutorials or material at all to set up routing with our custom part numbers, I'm only starting to get my feet wet with it. Unfortunately my new boss sees this as an opportunity to take advantage of the Routing seat we purchased two years ago and have been paying upkeep on ever since. I agree with you though Scott, the 07 tutorials were useless, hopefully the 08's are better.

...of course, IT won't let us upgrade to '08 until they are on SP 4.

RE: Routing Opinions

(OP)
on another note, anybody know the proper format for the "SW-pipelength" property?

RE: Routing Opinions

The igetit tutorial is the way to go for routing initially.  However, after having used it a bit, I've found that once you've mastered the nuances of 3-D sketching within an assembly, you've got the beast 90% licked.  There are some things that aren't immediately obvious and seem more complicated than necessary, but that's par for the course.  You really just need to play with it for a couple of days.

As far as your custom part numbers go, can't you treat the completed routes like any other in-context sub-assembly?

Dan

www.eltronresearch.com

RE: Routing Opinions

(OP)
Yes I can, and we do. But my weld shop then needs to know what parts they need to build that in context assembly. As all our flanges, elbows, pipe, etc have specific part numbers I need to have those properly displayed in a BOM when the 2-D of the route assembly goes back to the shop to be built.

I'm more concerned by SW's declaration that the length displayed by the SWpipeLength property isn't the actual pipe length in some scenarios, but rather the length of the sketch line that defines that pipe. in the case where you are blowing a hole in the side of a larger pipe and inserting a smaller one into it, this could be a real problem. But I think I've got a design table solution for it.

RE: Routing Opinions

This is what our VAR told us to do to get SWPipeLength into Bill of Material. I have not been able to get the length into the QTY column.
 
Pick any cell in your BOM above title block, Right Mouse Click, Insert, Column Right or Column Left. Make sure Column Properties is in SolidWorks tree. Custom Property must be highlighted. In the pull down dialog pick “SWPipeLength”.

Bradley
SolidWorks Premim 2007 x64 SP4.0
PDM Works, Dell XPS Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU
3.00 GHz, 5 GB RAM, Virtual memory 12577 MB, nVidia 3400

RE: Routing Opinions

I just spent 4 hours with my VAR (Design-Point.com) setting up my pipe routing library.  This seems to be the hardest thing about routing.

We are going to tackle the wiring side starting in December.

RE: Routing Opinions

(OP)
I'm doing alright getting the library set up. I think I've even found a way around the mislabeled pipe length issue I mentioned above. what I'm having trouble with now is getting the configurations of pipe that the system creates to show the right part number. I thought I had it figured out in the design table, but SW seems to override my choice and fill it in on its own after the configuration is created.

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