Identification of Weld Beads in Assemblies of B-Rep Models

Current CAD systems have dedicated functionalities to model weld beads, but it is often cumbersome to use these systems. This study presents a method to analyze the geometry of assemblies of B-Rep models to automatically identify possible welds among the parts using prediction rules. Adjacent faces are detected, and Boolean operators on planar loops are used to identify bead paths. Beads are then split in homogeneous portions based on the topology of the connected parts. The main goals of this study are to increase the speed of the welding definition process and to benefit applications such as the cost estimation of steelwork products. Cost estimates are based on the shape, the length and the dimension of each weld bead. Some industrial examples are presented to show the benefits in terms of time savings and accuracy to the estimation process.