Flat of a rolled cylindrical part 1

[RNDguy]

How can I make a part in Inventor which is a rolled sheet metal such that its flat pattern is linked and generated. I know this can be done possibly by using 2 folds of 180 degrees each (actually the second a little less than 180 deg to give a gap for butt-welding the longitudinal seam). But this is not all - I want to have cutouts in the cylinder at known places for pipe nozzles piercing through this cylinder. Moreover, one free edge of this cylinder is joggled in using roll forming, and near the other edge, a rolled bead is formed into this shell all around. The real challenge is that this be done all in sheet metal application so that a flat layout of the whole thing can be obtained. Can this be done and how? Thanks.

 

[jlcochran1]

You can extrude or revolve a cylinder, then extrude cut your gap, (or revolve less than 360 degrees). Extrude cut your holes normal to the cylinder. Then switch to sheet metal application mode and highlight the inside surface of the cylinder and perform a sheet metal unfold (flat pattern) command. This will generate the ellipse for the hole cut outs etc. You can then save as a .dwg, make final tweaks in AutoCAD before exporting to a .dxf format for the burn table.

The problem is the joggle joint at the end. Not sure if there is a way to generate this directly from a rolled cylinder since would involve a bi-directional unfold. If you can determine a solution please post back. You may have to compensate for this material manually in AutoCAD by offsetting one edge.

 

[RNDguy]

jlcochran1:
Thanks. I do not know of a solution for joggled and beaded ends, maybe there is one? About manual compensation for the joggled end in flat layout, is there a way of doing this in an .idw file? I guess I can make a joggled end by a simple revolve separately and "attaching" it to the shell in the model, generating a flat for the shell only and then manually fixing the .idw file for needed compensation - but again, I wonder how?

 

[jlcochran1]

We are not currently using Inventor on a production basis. You have hit some of the snags I encountered, but have not had time to resolve. Inventor is not widely used in the tank and pressure vessel industry yet. We are also comparing SolidWorks. If you come up with work-arounds please post back here.