Spot Welds on Assemblies

[awilson.78948]

We have just started using Inventor 9. We are trying to design a sheet metal assembly that requires spot welds. Documentation says welds need an edge. Spot welds need to be applied to a face. I have some discussion threads from Autodesk as recently as Jan 2005 saying they are aware of the need to apply a spot weld to a face or non-edge. Has anyone here discovered a way to use spot welds that are not on an edge? Is this "fixed" in Inventor 10? Thanks in advance for any help.

[jonathan.landeros]

We have just started using Inventor 9. We are trying to design a sheet metal assembly that requires spot welds. Documentation says welds need an edge. Spot welds need to be applied to a face. I have some discussion threads from Autodesk as recently as Jan 2005 saying they are aware of the need to apply a spot weld to a face or non-edge. Has anyone here discovered a way to use spot welds that are not on an edge? Is this "fixed" in Inventor 10? Thanks in advance for any help.

It's better in R10, but not 100% there IMHO (there's no specific spot weld tool yet). I've seen a couple of ways of addressing spot welds.

#1. Pattern sketches to represent your welds (such as with a series of 'X's). Show the sketches in the drawing.

#2. R10 has a new 'Groove Weld' Tool that can fill gaps. If I really need to show material, I split the face with a circle (or what ever shape you need) on both parts.
When I assemble the parts, I leave a very small gap (.0005) for example. Then use the groove weld tool to fill the two circles between parts.

#3. I think #2 will work in R9 as well, but you would have to use a cosmetic weld since R9 isn't very good at filling gaps with the fillet weld, and there is no groove weld tool in R9. This also works in R10. It's not exactly a spot weld, but it's worked for me.

I attached a pick of number 2 and 3.

I hope this is helpful.