Create Spot Welds

Connect two parts over a circular area on the contacting surfaces.

You can create stand alone spot welds, create a series of spot welds on a line or polyline, or create spots from a CSV file.

  1. In the Project Tree, click on the Assembly branch.
  2. In the Connections workbench toolbar, click (Create spot or laser welds).
  3. Choose one of the following:
    Spot Weld Type Steps
    Stand alone spot
    1. Select the Stand alone spot radio button.
    2. In the modeling window, select a point on the part surface for the center of the spot weld.
    3. You can edit the spot coordinates in the X, Y, and Z fields.
    Spots on line
    1. Select the Spots on line radio button.
    2. For Number of spots, use the up/down arrows to select a number.
    3. In the modeling window, pick points to position the spots line.
    Spots from CSV
    1. Select the Import welds from CSV radio button.
    2. Click the Import button and browse to the desired file.
    3. Click Open.
  4. Define the Spot diameter.
  5. Click OK.
    Note: Welds are only found within a tolerance of the spot weld diameter. So, for a 5mm weld, the XYZ values must be within 5mm of the part surfaces.

Imported Spot Weld CSV File Format

You can create a .csv file using a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. The file must have a header row and one or more additional data rows (one for each spot weld). The header row can have any number of fields but only the following are read.

CSV file format fields

  • “X_Pos”, “Y_Pos”, “Z_Pos” – this is the X, Y and Z coordinates of the spot weld location
  • “Connected Part 3” (optional) By default SimSolid creates a spot weld between the two closest parts to the XYZ value. If a third part is also desired, place any alpha-numeric value here. This tells SimSolid to create 2 welds between the 3 closest parts.