Rounding dimensions to nearest 0.5

[tighthead]

How can we get SW2005 to round drawing dimensions to the nearest 0.5mm?
This is for structural steel and workshop does not work to better than 0.5mm.
Reason (this is only 1 example) we don't model to exact is say we want to dimension to the middle of SHS89 (Square Hollow Section) it would be 44.5 but if we round it becomes 45, not the middle & can it add up.
We don't want to dimension to 1 decimal place for every thing as this "confuses" the workers if we get 44.3, we would want it to be 44.5 ! & 44.2 to be 44 etc.
Sometimes uneven numbers are results of angles etc so for our industry 0.5mm rounding is what is required.
Can't spend to long on things (model to exactly the number required is not the answer) as price sensitive industry.

 

[ctopher]

Go into options or preferences and you can set it to what you want. All parts should be modeled to exactly nominal.

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 05
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716

 

[brengine]

You can definitely choose how many decimal places to round to, but I don't think you can specify that it round to the nearest 0.5mm (as in 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, etc... and nothing in between). That'd be pretty handy if that capability is available.

Could they work in inches (even if it was the dual units), because inches can be set to round to a nearest fractional value?

Ken

 

[jt4ward]

If I understand what your saying you can do it using a design table. We construct a lot of our blocks in metric and then round them up to the nearest 1/4" for getting out rough stock. In the excel window use the ceiling command. I have one cell that is the dimension value in mm, another cell that converts it to english, another cell that rounds, and finally a property cell that combines all the single dimensions to one cell for use in the BOM. Kind of confusing I know but it was the only way I could get it to work with multiple configurations.

There is one problem though if you change dimensions on the fly you will have to open the design table so that everything has a chance to update in Excel. If there is a better way I would love to hear it. I really don't like this way but it does work.

Ex. of the ceiling command, =CEILING(G3,0.25)

for 0.5mm you would use 0.5 instead of 0.25, and ceiling always rounds up.

Hope this helps.

Jason Forward
Solidworks 2006 sp3.4
AMD FX-60 2.6 Ghz 4.0Gb Ram
Quadro FX3400 / XP64

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

You could use the "MROUND" function in Excel to round to the nearest .5


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