Excellent video. I have been making frames out of 80/20 this way for a couple years and find it extremely useful. I also use weldments for lumber objects. You point out some very handy things that I have not considered. Simplifying the profiles is one thing, this really makes it easier to help to position the profiles when are are not just using c/l of extrusions. I am going to go and simplify some of my profiles. I also like the fact that you add the gussets in the weldment. I usually make the weldment and then a separate assembly file. This should save me some time in the future. Finally I like the feature near the end where you click to make a separate view of a certain component - very handy if you have special cuts! Thank you, this was a great video!
This is nice thank you very much. But I don't understand few things. One of your main goal during this lesson, to make it as simple as possible. You start with simplifying the cross-section, but then later you keep repeating the "simple, simplify, simplest" words as your advice. You know Solidwork is created to design machine parts, assemblies, and drawings. Sometimes very-very complicated parts with lot of details. So its able to do sophisticated things. It must be able to do that. And an extruted frame structure what we do here, is a simple thing by nature. How many more simpler "machine" do exist, than this. Not so many. Its sometimes rectangular sometimes cubic, one has few more rods than other one but its a bloody simple thing anyway. Why is that your most major contruction line - "make it simple!!!" ? You start with simplifiyng cross-section, in step one you lose immediatly one of the most important capability of Solidworks : to make precise stress analysis on your frame. Because you change the cross sectional momentum of inertia in the 1st second . Will it collapse when we put a 300 kg aquarium on it ? You don't wanna know that. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OjEDW1WDLlQ.html I know "make it simple" is very general and good principle always. Except when its bloody simple already.
Solidworks really struggles to render the details from the 80/20 profiles when you have many different sections of aluminum in the same part. All of the small ridges and fillets can make computers struggle to even render the weldment and running simulations can take far too long, as the meshes can get very complicated, very quickly. Slight simplification can greatly increase the speed of the process without affecting the accuracy in a noticeable way. Precise stress analysis can be done on a smaller scale, but for full assemblies, it could be nearly impossible for people with average computers to perform the analysis in the first place, with the complex profiles from 80/20. I hope this is helpful to someone!
@@tannerwhite2602 Thanks it was a little late response :) "Solidworks really struggles to render the details..." - I use nVidia Geforce GTX 1080 graphics card, not the newest one, but it's fast enough. I recommend you developing your GPU, you'll be surprised. Another remark: you can change the representation of the model without simplifying the parts. It could greatly improve the displaying speed. Tools -> Options -> Sytem Options Performance Tools -> Options -> Document Properties -> Image Quality I think maybe this video is obsolete, it's from 2014, I use SW 2021 and I have much more complicated frames than the above one without any speed problem. 7 yrs in the computer world is very-very long. Although in general your concept is smart and I agree with your way of thinking.
Doesn't seem to work! First, the "Structural member" options don't show my new profile. If you go to Options>File Location>Weldment Profile then you can specify the location of your design. Even then it doesn't show up as an option. This is a terrible instructional video!
