Weldment Profile Orientation: Method to the Madness [VIDEO]

Weldment Rotation

I had a recent question asking me why weldment profiles are so difficult to control the rotation of and orientation of. They seem almost random. Admittedly, I had used mostly square tube for weldments in my time as a mechanical designer, but I tried to seek out an answer to the question using Angle Iron (the “L” shaped profile). What I found was baffling.

In the end it turns out that it matters what the start and end point of the line is. The profile sketch of the first segment of each group will always locate at the “start” point of the line. In terms of rotation, the profile will always rotate clockwise if you are looking at it from the side closest to the sketch (with the extrusion going towards the back of your screen).

In case it wasn’t apparent from my use of the Right Plane for one of my sketches, the “horizontal” of the profile is parallel to the sketch plane and the “vertical” is based on the positive direction of the sketch plane. For more information about the positive and negative direction of a plane, or more specifically, how to flip it in SolidWorks 2014, please refer to this blog article.

As you can imagine, it becomes even more difficult to predict how the profile will position itself if your sketch uses Convert Entities, but that’s a subject for another blog article!

So, now you can see the method of the madness, and hopefully it will not seem so random when applying weldment profiles.