Welding Symbol Tool

Dear Alfred

I have spoken to you by phone some years ago when I visited Enginered Software. As a distributor of PowerCADD in Sweden I have now got WildTools 4 and I do really love those new tools for drawing bolts, screws and other stuff. I have been looking at how the tools follows our Swedish (and international) standard according to a recent fact book "Drawingtechnique 2000" (translated Swedish title). I am very satisfied with most of your wonderful tools.

However regarding the welding symbols there are some differences in the reference lines according to my fact book (it claims that it shows the present international standard). The examples show that there should also be a dashed reference line below, and sometimes above, the solid line where text and symbols are placed. Although it is possible to ungroup the welding symbol to move the text and symbols and place a dashed line according to the standard, it is of course preferable to have it done directly in the tool. If you are interested I could fax a few pages summary of the international welding symbols. I need your fax number then. As you say in your manual dealing with excited engineers can be a problem but it would be a very welcomed change if the welding symbol tool could be adapted to our standard.

My intention is to try to get time to translate WildTools, program and manual, as soon as possible as I have up till now done with PowerDraw and PowerCADD.

Looking forward hearing from you.

Best regards

Jesper von Segebaden
Segebaden CAD-Data HB
Box 44
178 02 DROTTNINGHOLM
Sverige
Tel: 08 - 759 01 25
Tel Intnl: +46 87 59 01 25
Fax: 08 - 759 08 63
Fax Intnl: +46 87 59 08 63
e-mail: jv.segebaden@mailbox.swipnet.se

As most of you know, I don't know a thing about welding symbols, so please give me your comments on this suggested change to the Welding Symbol tool. (By the way, I will be in Europe from September 23 to October 5.)

Alfred Scott
alfred@seqair.com

I think if you do the ISO type weld symbols, it should be added as an option, because I have never used it myself, or have I seen it used by anyone else. I also see no mention of it in my steel manual, or in the American Welding Society Structural Welding Code, which is the welding bible here.

Mike Emde
Mike@netvelocity.com

You got me. I'm not familiar with the ISO standards. My bible is the American Welding Society Code (AWS) or AISC. I know there's concern about ISO standards in large engineering firms that have an international business, but that isn't me!

Would it be possible to work out a "European" version of the tool with this guy? My personal feeling is that having another bunch of never-used lines in the basic tool would be confusing and cumbersome.

Ed Cundy
edcundy@megalink.net

Is there a way you could have the symbol do both (our conventional standard in the U.S and the international) rather than have it one way or the other? Not being an engineer, I don't really know what our standard is but I do know that what was posted on the web page is not what I am used to seeing...

Gene Silva
SILVARCH@AOL.com

I have been looking a little bit more on the welding standard now. When I got your tool I started to ask some PowerCADD users how useful it would be if it could handle their welding symbols. They said it would make their life a lot easier.

As I didn't know anything about welding and standards (as a former designer of wind tunnel models and test equipment where nothing is standard) I went to the Swedish Organization for Standardization and bought a 100 pages, $100 book about the standard SS-ISO 2553: "Welded, brazed and soldered joints - Symbolic representation on drawings".

The standard has been accepted as European standard EN 22 553:1994, so it is not absolutely new.

The book is luckily written in both English and Swedish and contains some text but mostly figures explaining the welding symbols and how they are used. I have continued the work on the drawing I sent to you to give a more thourough explanation about the symbols. It is now a condensation of the information in the standard "bible" where there are many more figures.

It think that it shows that, in some situations, the dashed line is very important for the clarification on where and how the weld is placed. It is also clear that it is not used in every situatioin so the dashed line should be an option as expressed in one of the comments on your website. The dashed line is probably the most important improvement because it is more difficult to add afterwards.

In my drawing you can see that there are also some elementary symbols in the standard that you don't have in your tool, and also some combinations that cannot be created. It wold be very fine to have these too. As I don't know how much work it would take to accomplish this I don't say that it is absolutely necessary but it would certainly make the users of your tool very happy. I do also think that a complete tool is a good selling argument.

Jesper