I Hit A Snag When Designing A Set Of Closet Doors For My House
In the last 100+ years my house has been around, a previous owner decided that it would be a good idea to remove all the closet doors (it was an unfortunate design decision). The result is that all the junk that lives in a closest is on display for all to see. This was an issue I aimed to correct with some new closet doors. After some searching around for factory made doors, I was not satisfied with the selection (or price). This led me to SOLIDWORKS to quickly model up a set of closet door that would look like they belonged in my house back in 1895, and not a big box store from 1995… but I digress.
I Designed All The Door Parts…Now What Do I Buy?
The problem arose after I had finished the basic design of the doors, and needed to figure out how much, and what size, wood to buy.
Fortunately, I quickly thought of a fast way to get what I wanted (without using the measure tool and a piece of paper to tally the quantities). The answer? Weldments!
How Is A Wood Door A Weldment?
Yes, my doors will be (lovingly) crafted out of wood, and you may think that weldment functionality only pertains to well…weldments. The truth is, if you are using any form of standard shaped material (like standard size wood boards) the ability to quickly generate cut lists is one of the places that weldments shine, regardless of material.
A huge bonus, you don’t need to pre-plan to use this functionality (other than starting with a multi-body part…more on that here).
Once I had my design, I simply clicked on the Weldment feature, adding the weldment feature to the tree.
You can also add a weldment feature by going in the main menu to: Insert>Weldments>Weldment…
Once a weldment feature is added to the model, a “Cut List” item will appear in the feature tree.
I then created a bounding box for my parts by right clicking on the “Cut list” and then choosing “Create Bounding Box” from the dropdown menu.
Presto! I now had a list of the overall sizes and quantities for all the pieces of wood that would be going into my door.
The other nice thing about this method over simply measuring and using a piece of paper; now when I want to make a change, my cut list updates automatically.
Finally I created a bill of material, and I now have an accurate list with overall dimensions for my first cuts on the table saw.
Next time you need a quick tally of the bodies in your multi part assembly, try giving a weldment a try!
