Flat Patterns

[YJeepster]

I am looking at a way to have a hole chart, K-Factor, Bend Radius, Material thickness, and bend directions added to flat patterns in the draft. Other then putting this information in manually. I have heard of hole chart programes out there, but can't seem to find any. Can anyoue help me out?

For those of you who use MerryMechs SMP software I would like to have my SW flat pattern layouts look like theres with very little manual entery.

Cheers,

 

[Stoker]

You can get the flat pattern dimensioned just like in SMP by using Auto-ordinate, which is available from

http://www.extremedp.com

Since you are dealing with sheet metal, the hole chart programs which are available won't meet your needs. This is because they typically are customized to work with holes created with the hole wizard, whereas you will want your routine to be able to handle non-circular holes such as obrounds, squares, trapezoids etc. You will probably also want it to include forming tools as well. I have done a fair bit of VBA programming in SWX, and can honestly say that this is not an easy task. Charting the round holes would probably be fairly easy - a routine could loop through the skeches and extract the number of circles and their diameters and output to Excel. I don't know of a way to pick out the other types of holes though, which is probably why a routine like this has not been developed yet.

I assume you are modelling your parts in SWX and exporting via dxf to the Merry Mech software. Why don't you let SMP create the hole chart? This is much easier than trying to do it in VBA.

The sheet metal data (K-factor, bend radius and thickness) can be extracted via a macro and written as a note in the drawing. I can maybe post some code to help you on this part. The bend directions is a bit more difficult, but maybe someone else has already done this?

 

[MadMango]

Putting all this info on the drawing has me thinking if our company does things the hard way. Currently we provide both the 2d drawing and the flat pattern to manufacturing. The flat is used on our laser to make the blank, then it is formed via the 2d drawing.

Seems that by putting all this (k-factor, BU/BD, ect) info on the flat pattern drawing, one might be able to releave themselves of have=ing to deal with the 2d drawing.

Do most companies operate this way, or like my comapny? I've been trying hard the last several months to come up with a way to get our manufacturing the info they need for production, but do it in a way that doesn't require 2d drawings (like sending models of machined parts to the CNCs). Then, only Inspection would need the 2d drawings... "The attempt and not the deed confounds us."

 

[YJeepster]

MadMango.
Our place sends the SMP Flat out top the floor along with the customer drawing.

Stroker,

While right now we are using Solid Edge, but we are going to be changing over to Soildworks (Three of us have used SW in the past and SE is way to picky in my opinion!) But right now we will draw the part in SMP (if its easy) and the dxf it out to JetCam or in SE and dxf it to JetCam (We are currently changing over to JetCam.

If you could email me the code that would be great. As for the hole chart thing, I will have to work on it a bit more.
I sure would like to see SW add obrounds, rec, squares, and traps to the hole wizard. That way they would show up with center makes and it would also be easier to write a hole chart program.

geoffg@wesgar.com

Cheers,

Geoff