System Settings – Weldment Cut List Options

Recently we have come across some issues with customer’s weldment cut lists. The issues are related to cut list folder not grouping identical bodies or not updating correctly after any modifications on the weldment files.

In this blog, we will introduce the Solidworks System Options settings reside in your part template which will make a big difference to your cut list performance.

Starting with a sample multi-body part we have created for testing. Below are a couple of screen shots showing that the cut list folder are not grouping identical bodies correctly:

1. This screen shot shows that in one of the cut list folder “SIDE TUBES”, there are 3 bodies are collected. However, those 3 bodies are not identical as one of the beam is longer than the other 2.

2. This screen shot shows that in one of the cut list folder “END CAPS”, and there are 4 bodies collected. However, only 3 of those bodies are the End Caps, and the last body a Leg.

The little setting inside of the Solidworks System Options is causing this issue.

To get all the identical bodies correctly collected into each cut list folders, we will need to go to “Tools” > “Options” , and then we can find the “Cut list options” under “Document Properties” > “Weldments”.

There are 4 check boxes under the Cut list options see the below screen shot:

a. Automatically creat cut lists – when this is enabled in the part template, when every you create a weldment feature, a cut list will be automatically created.

b. Automatically update cut lists (may affect performance with many bodies) – when this is enabled, if there is any changes/modification that is done on the weldment part, e.g. changing the length of a body, changing a weldment profile for a structal memeber, etc. , the changes in cut list will be automatically updated.

c. Rename cut list folders with Description property value –  when this is enabled, you will see all the cut list folder name gets renamed to the same as the cut list description property, see the image below showing the cut list folder name gets renamed:

d. Collect identical bodies – once this option is enabled, all the identical bodies will be grouped into the correct body. However, as the previous cut list has been created and wrong bodies are collected into different cut list folders, we will need to delete the previous cut list and recreate a new one. The new created cut list will collect all the identical bodies to the correct cut list folders. If you have “Create Cut Lists Automatically” enabled, you do not have to manually create the cut list again. As soon as the previous cut list is deleted, a new cut list will be created.

Below is a screen shot showing the option for deleting the cut list:

Once the new cut list is generated, you will see the correct result for body collection, see screen shots below:

As the cut list options are part of the “Document Properties”, the last step is to save the setting changes into our part template. To do this, we can open a new part with our exiting template, and then save this as a new part template (or we can overwrite an exiting template):

Once this is completed, for all the weldment files we create in the future, the last modified cut list option settings will remain the same.

I hope this article will be useful.

Thanks for reading.

Kind Regards

Mark Deng

Applications Engineer

Central Innovation Auckland, New Zealand

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