curved surface that can be flattened 1

[vansamson]

I have asked the question below in another way.

Like one who have given a help tip previously, I have come to conclude without mathematical basis that curved surfaces that can be perfectly flattened can only come from surface developments or profiles that have cylindrical, conical, corrugated, cylindrical or conical with varying radii or combinations of them, all having a characteristic linear curved surface—that is, a curved surface composed of straight lines.

My question is, using Solidworks, how can I flatten such a curved surface so that I can come up with the flat profile of a product?

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

When in the Sheet Metal mode, select the Flatten tool.

Or, also when in SM mode, saving the model as DXF or DWG format will create a flat pattern.

 

[AnnaWood]

Have you created a sheet metal part? Do you have a feature called SheetMetal in your feature tree?

Have you gone through the SolidWorks Tutorials under Help? There is one there for sheet metal.

Cheers,



Anna Wood
Core i7 EE965, FirePro V8700, 12 Gb RAM, OCZ Vertex 120 Gb SSD, Dell 3008WFP 30" Monitor
SW2010 SP2.1, Windows 7 x64

http://www.solidmuse.com

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[TheTick]

I'm giving OP a star just for being a fast learner.

 

[rollupswx]

Attach your file here.