As well as offering a smart solution for metal fabricators seeking to accelerate their request-for-quotation procedures, the software will help companies with in-house bending machines to reduce design-to-manufacturing times. "TubeWorks will provide our customers with an enormous competitive advantage and is an important addition to our growing portfolio of software tools. "Automating the extraction of manufacturing data from CAD files helps bending machine users to create production-ready programs much more quickly and efficiently," says Unison Managing Director Alan Pickering. TubeWorks is fully integrated into SolidWorks, making additional standalone solutions for generating manufacturing data unnecessary during the design, development, and production of tubular components. Unison has obtained exclusive worldwide sales for the TubeWorks add-in from developer 3DCompound. It can accommodate tube models with round, square, rectangular, oval, or flat-sided oval cross-sections. The software automatically extracts important manufacturing data such as tube specifications and CNC bending data, from both native SolidWorks models and common CAD file formats such as STEP, IGES, and Para Solid. Tube bending machine builder Unison has launched an innovative PC-based CADCAM solution, TubeWorks, for tubular metal fabricators who use SolidWorks, allowing them to accelerate order processing and pre-production development time from hours to minutes. This custom property can be displayed in a note in a drawing or in the BOM."Unison to Sell TubeWorks for SolidWorks Tube Bending" Lastly, I will add a Custom Property from File>Properties and link it to the global variable Overall Length. I want to select the dimensions from the sketch to ensure that the Overall Length updates if any of the dimensions update. But I do not want to key in those values in the equation. The equation would be “Overall Length” = 5.0 + 0.785 + 1.5 + 0.785 + 4.0 for this example. My equation will be Overall Length = the sum of the tube segment lengths. Next, I need to add global variable to sum up the length of the tube segments through the equations tool. I will add two dimensions to determine the lengths of the arcs (arc length dimensions are made by selecting the two end points of the arc and then the arc itself), and I will add one dimension for the vertical straight length in my model. So what I will do is edit the path sketch and add some reference dimensions to it. I need to obtain the overall length of the tube and my driving dimensions do not capture that. The tube I will use for this example was made with the Sweep command using a profile and path. So here is a Redneck Workaround to get the overall length of a bent tube:
But many of us just have a SOLIDWORKS Core or SOLIDWORKS Office Professional seat, so we lack that capability that routing provides. The Rogue Fabrication bender has a fixed bend offset for every radius of die.
In bending 101, you will learn how to put a bend where you want it, based on where the bend starts, and how to bend the right amount. If you have a seat of SOLIDWORKS Office Premium, the Routing capability will give you the overall length of a tube/wire. Bending Tube with a Rogue Model 600 Bender, 101: The basics. Numerous times, customers have asked me how to get the overall length of a tube created in SolidWorks.