Does anybody use Structure Design workbench?

I was wondering whether there are people who are using this workbench, and if you are: do you like it?

When I first saw this one I was pretty disappointed but once you "get into it" a little bit (I searched on Google, Youtube, etc...) it actually seems to be not so bad. I'm familiar with SolidWorks Weldments and of course it's more user friendly, or as Bertrand would say "SolidWorks Simple!"

Well, despite that, even the CATIA workbench beats doing it all in Part design and Assembly design I'm fairly sure. but I've never come across a company who is actually using it. Mind you, I haven't been around for THAT long. Hence my question: does anybody use "Structure Design" workbench?

Bath Iron Works (BIW) and Huntinton Ingalls Shipbuilding used V5 Structure Functional Design, V5 Structure Detail Design and V5 Structure Design to design the DDG-1000 (aka Zumwalt class) destroyer.  BIW also used V5 Structure Manufacturing to cut and form the plates and shapes for the ship.  Bath Iron Works has just completed an evaluation of the V6 structures applications.

I personally used V5 Structure Design to model a 120 Torpedo Weapons Retriever (a navy vessel).  I modeled the hull, deckhouse, foundations, and outfit items such as handrails, ladders, masts and stairs (roughly 2000 parts) plus some non-structural stuff such as pipies (piping design), ducts (HVAC design), furniture (part design) and the crane (part design, assembly design, kinematics).

Oh, wow, you're looking at it from a shipbuilding perspective. Very cool. I was thinking more like mechanical welded frames in the realm of tooling, jigs and fixtures. Do you think Structure Design is a competitive solution in that domain?

I've always wondered about CATIA's strengths in Shipbuilding, I know GE Electric Boat uses CATIA. How does it compete against more dedicated ship solutions like Tribon, or even CADDS 5?

In V5, there is a "Frame" application which was a customization of Structure Design for Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC).  V6 development is currently focused on shipbuilding but the AEC customizations will be coming.  I have been working on a structural model of a small warehouse to find the gaps existing in V6 R2013x.  I can create beams and simple connections, but some of the things I am seeing in this warehouse (primariy related to the steel roof and steel siding) take a bit more work than I would like.

One of the things I like is that I have a catalog of over 1000 structural shapes, discrete material lists, and discrete plate sizes defined in my setup and catalog.  As a result, I can generate a BOM that tells me how many feet of WT13x7 I need and how much 3/8 inch A36 steel plate I need (for example).

BIW found the surfaces and definition of non-rectangular plates in CADDS-V to be too crude to use for steel cutting.  They have migrated most of their CADDS-V data to CATIA V5.  I do not know much about Tribon, but I understand it is not as comprehensive as the Dassault suit of tools.  I do not know how important that is to you.

I'm not involved with these workbenches, just curious :) and at least now this sub-forum isn't empty, hooray!

For example when I was at Bombardier Transport there were many welded assemblies, like a small welded frame that will support a polyester cover for a seating arrangement. So seems like an ideal kind of assembly to use Structure Design for but they just used Part Design and Assembly Design for that.

It just made me curious, perhaps it only starts becoming a serious value add with big structural things (like you say: ship and AEC) and not so much mechanical welded assemblies. Now that you mention AEC, whatever happened to SolidWorks Live Buildings? And the CATIA Plant workbench is that one used at places? I remember reading an article from way back around 2000 about the Jeep Toledo plant using CATIA-CADAM Plant solutions.

I am sorry, but I do not have any answer for you latest questions.

No problem, it was a SolidWorks thing, I was intrigued so I searched the SolidWorks Forums and it seems to have become the new Dassault solution "Lean Construction" it'll be interesting to see how it works once it comes out of selective beta. And how it will compete or peacefully co-exist with Digital Project?

hello,

could you clarify in a few short sentences what is the difference between structure design (SR1), structure functional and detailed definition (SFD and SDD i think)? they seem to be overlapping in functionality as far as i can determine...

this question was for Gary, sorry for the inconvenience. new user here.

best regards

Structure Functional Design (SFD) is meant to define a large structural system such as a ship hull with decks, bulkheads and frames.  One SFD part may represent thousands of structural parts.  SFD uses a surface representation (no thickness) and simplfied representations of endcuts and slots.

A Structural Detail Design model is developed from the SFD model by splitting the SFD model into manufacturing assemblies typically representing a unit (the largest subassembly that can be lifted with a crane e.g. 20 tons).  For example: a 600 foot Navy destroyer was built in roughly 60 units.  One SDD part equals one unit.  SDD uses also uses a light representation, but it represents thickness of plates and shapes, and also accurately represents endcuts and slots.

Finally, a SDD is converted into individual Structure Design (SR1) parts. 

Note: the above process works well for designing large structures (e.g. 100,000+ parts).  When defining a 120 foot vessel with roughly 2500 structural parts, I did all the work in SR1.  The vessel was small enough that I could display the entire structure with 8 MB of physical memory and it only had one deck and 6 bulkheads, so I saw little advantage in using SFD and SDD.

Hey Gary, could you say something more about this "Frame" customization of Structure Design? is this like a plug-in to Catia?

Honestly, I have been working with V6 for about 4 years now, and do not remember much of V5 ("Frame" was part of V5 structures).  I have been working with the V6 Heavy Industries Steel applications and other non-structure applications.  I am aware of the V6 Buildings Structures application, but have not used it.  However, I did look through the documentation and saw nothing in Buildings Structures specifically related to the definition of structural frames. 

try https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcZ8MgQLD40&t=5s