Flat pattern in a multi body part

[Gurjjeet]

Hello

I have a multi body sheetmetal part. It has 3 flat patterns & 5 other items/bodies. It is weldment so needs to be one part file.

Now, I want to have my flat pattern in the drawing file,
But I am not getting the flat pattern views in "View Pallette". There is no Flat pattern configuration in part. What is the recommnded method of putting the flat patterns views in SWX 2010?

it used to be pretty straight forward for sheetmetal parts in SWX 2008. There was always a flat pattern view in View Pallette & upon dragging the view in the drawing, it used to create a flat pattern config in part.

 

[Eltron]

Is this a sheet metal part or a weldment part? Sounds like you're getting your chocolate in your peanut butter.

Dan

http://www.eltronresearch.com

Dan's Blog

 

[Gurjjeet]

Dan, It is both.

I need to weld some sheetmetal parts together with some other plates & stuff.

It is doable, As I have done it already.
Also found a way to put flat pattern but it is not working as smoothly & giving me some errors(May be something wrong with the way I am using it but Still working on it).

So I want to know how others are doing it.

But sad to see that they have removed some good features/options in SWX 2010. I liked the view pallete to drag flat patterns. Now I gotta do with that "Model view command" which is un-necessarily useless.

 

[rollupswx]

After using multi-body solids push the parts out to individual *.sldprt files. More representative of the real world.

 

[Gurjjeet]

yes Rollupswx,
that is what I used to do with SWX 2008, but in SWX 2010 they added this new functionality to have more than one sheetmetal parts in one file. Which is exactly what I needed, as our company wants to have a flat pattern of even a L-shape gusset. So sometimes, I have 8 Sheetmetal parts in one Weldment part. So I thought it would be good to have this new feature. it worked good in part very quick & easy without having to have 3 additional files.

But the problem is how to insert a flat pattern in drawing?

 

[Gurjjeet]

I have found a way to do it with "Model Views" but very lengthy than the old method of view palette.

Any other way to do it will be appreciated.

 

[mechanate]

Gurjjeet,

First, I'm a little jealous that you get to play with the multi-bodied sheet metal parts within 2010, my company hasn't made the switch yet, so I'm not too sure how much of a help my suggestions will be. I've seen flat patterns drop off of the view palette before, and typically just refreshing the palette will bring them back. I'm not sure if this is the case for you though. There's also another workaround. Your model should contain configurations with the flat patterns, so selecting the appropriate flat pattern configuration by right clicking on the drawing view should bring it up. You can also try making some relative views of just the bodies themselves and selecting the appropriate flat pattern configurations. Probably not the "easier" solution you were looking for, but it may lead you in the right direction.

 

[Gurjjeet]

Nate,

I was also very excited to put my hands on these tools but believe me Mate, you r not missing anything. I had to send that particular drawing & model to my VAR as it started playing up big time.

This feature is still a "Toy" but not a "Tool".

It has got some serious bugs I was getiing a flat pattern from an angle(not normal from the face but from an angle). Then I was left with 2 flat patterns in the end of feature tree despite having the 3 sheetmetal parts. Then the configurations started to mix up. I was so frustrated by all that.

Thanks for your response, the configurations workaround is okay but still a lot lengthy than the view pallete way. I am so disappointed that they have gone backwards when it comes to sheetmetal. They should have given the all three flat patterns in the view pallete.

Anyways, my service guy at VAR is very good but still he is struggling & havent come back with a solution yet.

 

[Gurjjeet]

Some more info from SolidWorks Forums

https://forum.solidworks.com/message/156103#156103

I am not alone.......