Installing Commonly Used Weldment Profiles

Weldments are pre-defined structural elements such as pipes, angle iron, square tubing, and standard
beam cross sections that can be incorporated into your models. The two SolidWorks folders that exist by
default are the “ansi inch” folder and the “iso” folder.

Each subfolder contains a few common sizes of structural members. For example, the “ansi inch\pipe”
subfolder contains the three sizes below.

The weldments profiles are contained in the following folder (this path shows up in the images above):

c:\Program Files\SolidWorks Corp\SolidWorks\lang\english\weldment profiles\

Setting up Other Folders with Structural Members

SolidWorks includes additional folders (besides “ansi inch” and “iso”) of structural members that can be
unzipped and added to the “weldment profiles” folder. The “Unistrut” folder is set up as follows:

1. Go to “Design Library” on the right side of the SolidWorks screen and click “SolidWorks Content”
and then “Weldments”
2. Next, hold down [Ctrl] and then click one of the compressed folders to install a group of
weldment profiles. Here, [Ctrl] click on the “Unistrut” icon and save this zipped folder to
“c:\temp\” or another location where you have write access (we do this because sometimes
your computer won’t let you save directly to a subfolder under “c:\Program Files”
3. Navigate to “c:\temp” and double click on the “Unistrut.zip” folder to see the zipped files.
4. Copy the unzipped “Unistrut” folder to the following location.
c:\Program Files\SolidWorks Corp\SolidWorks\lang\english\weldment profiles\
5. Your computer may ask for administrator permission to perform this copy.
6. These profiles should now show up when you use “Insert>Weldments>Structural Member” to
associate a member (a line in a sketch) with a weldment profile.
Note that the “ansi inch” and “iso” folders that exist by default contain a very small sample of what’s in
the unzipped / uninstalled resources in the Design Library. You should unzip these if you plan to use
standard cross sections in your senior design or graduate projects.

Creating Your Own Weldment Profile

1. Draw the cross section in Solidworks and be sure to click “Exit Sketch” before saving the profile.
a. Create a sketch.

2. Give the sketch a name, and save it as a “Lib Feat Part (*.sldlfp)” to a folder where you have
write access. That is, in some cases, your operating system may not allow you to write to the
location in “Program Files” where SolidWorks source files are saved. In this case, just save the
file to a temporary location on your hard drive (or you can change write permissions to the
“weldment profiles” folder). Make sure the part is highlighted in the “tree” when saving the
“*.sldlfp” part file.

3. Copy the file to the location in “Program Files” where SolidWorks cross sections are saved.

c:\Program Files\SolidWorks Corp\SolidWorks\lang\english\weldment profiles\ansi inch

OR
c:\Program Files\SolidWorks Corp\SolidWorks\lang\english\weldment profiles\iso

Since our dimensions are in millimeters, we will save the profile to a folder under “iso.” We can
create our own folders under the “iso” folder to keep track of the profiles we create, or we can
save the profile in an existing folder. Here, we save the profile under in a folder named “square
tube.”

Using a Weldment Profile

1. Draw the shape of your structure and save it as a part file. You only need to create a 2D sketch,
not a 3D solid geometry. Be sure to click “Exit Sketch” before trying to define weldments.
2. Choose “Insert > Weldments > Structural Member” and then find the cross section you want. To
use the one defined above, make the following selection:
a. Standard: iso
b. Type: square tube
c. Size: square20x20

3. Click the members that will use each size of Weldment. You will probably need to make a “New
Group” for internal members.

The screen will look as shown below when defining the 2nd group of internal members. Note
that we can use multiple member sizes and profiles in a model.
 4. Your structure is now defined, and you can go into “Simulation” to set the material, member
type (truss or beam), displacement boundary conditions, and loads.

Changing Permissions to Allow Modification of “weldment profiles” Folder

1. Navigate to the “weldment profiles” folder.

2. Right click on the folder, and select “Properties.”

3. Click the “Security Tab.”
4. Click on “Edit”.
5. Scroll down to “Users” and select it (“Users” will probably have other text after it).
6. Click the “Allow” button for “Full control” and “Modify”.
7. Accept the changes