mhf23
Mechanical
- Jun 7, 2005
- 10
Hi,
I occasionally have to design small sheet metal parts, and our normal approach is to half-etch them along fold lines to make assembly easier. My problem is I can't work out how to do half-etching in UG Sheet Metal (NX3). Standard practice round here is to ignore this problem, and do manual flat sketches with an attached solid model, but that doesn't seem very neat to me. Being a lazy soul, I'd like to do one model and be able to unfold the thing at a later date and use it for production. The only thing is, I also want to use the model for FEA and those half-etched areas have become really important. Currently I'm faking it with a solid model, and I'll have to rebuild it at a later date, but this is kind of irritating and inelegant.
Any thoughts?
Matt Freeman,
Design Engineer,
UK
I occasionally have to design small sheet metal parts, and our normal approach is to half-etch them along fold lines to make assembly easier. My problem is I can't work out how to do half-etching in UG Sheet Metal (NX3). Standard practice round here is to ignore this problem, and do manual flat sketches with an attached solid model, but that doesn't seem very neat to me. Being a lazy soul, I'd like to do one model and be able to unfold the thing at a later date and use it for production. The only thing is, I also want to use the model for FEA and those half-etched areas have become really important. Currently I'm faking it with a solid model, and I'll have to rebuild it at a later date, but this is kind of irritating and inelegant.
Any thoughts?
Matt Freeman,
Design Engineer,
UK