December 19th, 2010

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TEKLA STRUCTURES EXTENSION WELD PREPARATION

I.

General Weld Preparation

This tool makes it easy for a user to apply a polygon weld and bevel groove preparation along the edge of plates typically required for partial and complete penetration welds. It can be used on other part types but is primarily meant to be used with plates.

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II. How to use

1. Inside the Tekla Structures interface go to the Tools>Macros menu, select Weld Preparation, then Press the Run button. A dialog similar to above will appear. You can also click on the icon shown below which will appear on its own toolbar after the extension installation process.

2. Weld Preparation can be used in all native model authoring configurations and in any environment of Tekla Structures. The xml file that controls the language strings displayed on the dialog box can be customized and found in .\Version\messages\DotAppsStrings\WeldPreparation.xml. 3. Fill in the appropriate settings into the dialog box, then press the Apply Weld and Preparation button. 4. You will then be prompted to pick the primary part to weld to.

5. After picking that part, you will be prompted to pick the surface of the secondary part to weld to. Make sure you are in rendered solid view mode, and make sure that outline planes is chosen on the selection toolbar.

6. Lastly you will be prompted to pick the edge which determines which edge of a plate is to be prepped along the surface you previously picked. Make sure you have the snap to geometry lines/points option chosen on the selection toolbar. Also be sure to snap exactly to an edge

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that is on the surface you previously picked. If you do not, the weld and preparation will not be created.

7. The tool creates a polygon cut for the preparation and a polygon weld for the weld. You can manually edit the weld afterwards. If you do not specify a Landing value, the Size field inside the weld properties dialog box will appear as zero assuming it is a complete penetration weld. 8. The command will then start over for you to apply additional preparations and welds. If you are done, simply press the Esc key or right mouse click and choose interrupt. 9. The Size field will only be used if you are applying a preparation to something other than a plate. If you are applying preparations to a plate, the thickness value will be extracted from the model and used as the preparation size. If you specify a landing the weld size will be the thickness of the plate minus the landing value. See the diagram below for more information.

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III. Known Limitations

1. The weld preparation does not consider skew formed between the two welded parts. It prepares the secondary part to exactly what is defined in the dialog box. 2. If you use the beam command to create a plate, and then you try to add a preparation to the sides of the plate that form the width, do not use the root opening value to cut the plate back for the weld. If you do the drawing will reflect an adjusted width, but the BOM and the CNC output will not adjust correctly. Model the root opening by adjusting the actual profile width, and set the root opening to be 0 in the Weld Preparation dialog box. 3. The weld and preparation are no longer associated with each other after they are created. You have to manually modify both objects in the model if you want to change, or delete, then apply a new weld and preparation with the tool.